(8th in a series of posts on 2 W. Market St.)
Bruce Haines is a Lehigh graduate who returned to Bethlehem after a 35-year career at USSteel. He put together a 12-member Partnership to rescue the Hotel Bethlehem from bankruptcy in 1998 and lives in the historic district.
Gadfly: The LVPC is a useless organization & the recommendation put forth in the minutes of the Comprehensive Planning Commission for vote read as follows: “While the proposed amendment addresses a matter of local concern, The LVPC recommends that the city ensure that such amendment would have broad enough applicability & be suitable throughout the two districts to justify its adoption.”
So considering that this amendment only applies to virtually one property in the entire city of Bethlehem on 2 West Market St., it clearly doesn’t meet this test. Suddenly once the LVCP staff realized that several members of the community were at the meeting to speak out against this ordinance requesting LVPC to reject this amendment, a staffer stood up to modify the recommendation to eliminate reference to broad applicability & to simply wimp out & say this was a local issue. Darlene Heller [Bethlehem Director of Planning and Zoning] failed to appear at the meeting to weigh in against this amendment as any good planner would. However, the blatant scurrying & texting by Bradley presumes that her input was nevertheless provided with the last minute scurry by the LVPC staffer that read the change.
This organization is a puppet of the city planners & should be defunded by the counties as a total waste of taxpayer money. This is bureaucracy in its worst form, & I have witnessed Bradley’s routine too many times. Who provides their funding????
Bruce
No public officials should be texting or having phone conversations with anyone else not in attendance in a public meeting unless the full content of the text or phone conversation is entered into the public record, with full disclosure at the time of the meeting as to the content of those texts or phone conversations!