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| Parsons gives me the hairy eyeball |
Northampton County Council met 30 times last year, including four budget hearings.
In addition, its committees met 30 times. Each Council member is encouraged to attend those meetings, regardless whether he or she is a voting member. In addition to individual attendance, the committees that do meet are an indication of what issues concern Council members.
As might be expected, Finance and Personnel head that list. They each met 11 times last year. With smooth sailing far from over at Gracedale and a centralized human services building in the works, Human Services was a hot Committee, too, meeting nine times. Other committees conducting meetings were Economic Development (8) and Open Space (2).
Despite numerous questions about the Home Rule Charter, Lamont McClure's Legal Committee has conducted no meetings since 2009. Peg Ferraro's Intergovernmental failed to meet, too. Its had just one meeting in the past 8 years, missing an opportunity to discuss regionalism for certain services like coroner or regional police
.
Below is a table showing attendance at Committee meetings, regular meetings and budget hearings. Scott Parsons, a Wind Gap blue collar worker, is this year's Northampton County Council workhorse. Ironically, Parsons was worried that he'd miss afternoon meetings because of his work schedule
Other workhorses include outgoing Council president John Cusick, Tom Dietrich, Peg Ferraro and Bob Werner. All had a combined attendance record of 90%.
Closely following them is Ken Kraft, with an 88% combined attendance record.
Three Council members, however, were no-show horses. Barb Thierry (57%) and Bruce Gilbert (40%) get failing grades, and neither sought re-election.
Lamont McClure (43%) has no such excuse. In fact, he was a County Executive candidate this year. He failed to attend a single committee hearing this year, and was only at 2 of 4 budget hearings. His attendance was a campaign issue when he sought re-election in 2010, and was campaign fodder during the Executive primary. .
| council members | ec. dev.
8 mtgs
|
human
services
9 mtgs
|
personnel
and finance
11 meetings
|
open
space
2 mtgs
|
council
26 meetings
|
budget
4 hearings
|
2013 | 2012 | 2011 |
| john cusick | 5 | 5 | 11 | 1 | 25 | 4 | 90% | 92% | 77% |
| tom dietrich | 7 | 9 | 9 | 0 | 25 | 4 | 90% | 84% | 75% |
| peg ferraro | 8 | 7 | 8 | 1 | 25 | 3 | 90% | 85% | 67% |
| bruce gilbert | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 21 | 0 | 40% | 48% | 53% |
| ken kraft | 7 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 24 | 4 | 88% | 84% | n/a |
| lamont mcclure | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 2 | 43% | 47% | 41% |
| scott parsons | 5 | 9 | 10 | 2 | 26 | 3 | 92% | 89% | n/a |
| barb thierry | 1 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 21 | 2 | 57% | 58% | 55% |
| bob werner | 8 | 7 | 9 | 1 | 25 | 4 | 90% | 82% | n/a |
21 comments:
Peg Ferraro had a dismal record and kicked up for her reelection. Next year she will be back to her old ways.
Shameful!!!
Scott Parsons is one hot bear.
Northampton County is loaded with bears and they are hoties!
Pass a resolution asking the court to
Free Greggy.
End the persecution. Has he not suffered enough at the hands of the system?
3:45, What are you smoking? and can you get let me know who your dealer is?
You can tell Peg was up for re-election.
Somebody lonely since their pig died?
The she I am referring to is Tricia Mezzacappa, who lost a bid for Council and blames everything on Ferraro instead of her own ridiculous antics.
The high voltage nuclear launch pad of hate destroyed the chances of a fine candidate during the primary, he doesn't care about good government only securing patrons and access to information for his hatchet jobs.
Yah, Greggy was high voltage and destroyed his chances.
Most voters turned against her after the "fine candidate" started talking about shooting a 14 yr. old schoolgirl.
Keistering this samsung galaxy was a stroke of mensa on my part, cant weight to you see you at council O'hare it will be a sweet reunion
3:45 AM and 5:45 PM
Seriously, what are you guys smoking? I gotta get some!
I think it is safe to say that you have been tampered with @ some point in your life.
Tricia is obviously off her meds again.
I for one am very proud of Scott as the representative of the Slate Belt area. He is doing very well and I hope he continues to be our voice on council well into the future. Not bad for a Pen Argyl grad. He and John Brown should make a great team and I expect nothing less than a solid working relationship with the new county executive.
No intergovernmental meetings? Geez..what is she thinking or maybe she isn't? The county COG meetings run by Lori Syweensky are tackling those exact issues right now and Peg did attend one COG meeting last year so maybe she will finally get on board the regional train. Regional efforts are slowly taking shape without her at this time..
Pegasus has a set of cans that could land her a waitress gig at Hooter's, she has my vote and full attention.
I think I just barfed up some chicken wings.
"No intergovernmental meetings? Geez..what is she thinking or maybe she isn't? The county COG meetings run by Lori Syweensky are tackling those exact issues right now and Peg did attend one COG meeting last year so maybe she will finally get on board the regional train. Regional efforts are slowly taking shape without her at this time.."
COGs are great but County Council really needs to step it up in this area. I have harped on this since 2006,when i first started these attendance report cards.
Let me give you an example. The County has the capacity, right now, to host the web pages of just about every municipal government in the County. In fact, the potential for video exists at them all, bc the county's bandwidth can handle it.But how many local governments know this? And that is just one of many examples. They need to start meeting and taking that mores seriously.
Very interesting information and no..I had no idea about the web site hosting capability of the county. If this would become common knowledge..maybe more municipalities and townships would come forward and participate knowing they would not have to shoulder the expense of a dedicated web site. Will pass this on at the next county COG meeting in March.
The county approach/study of animal control is a major regional project that might be too big to fund. The Slate Belt COG is now working on a smaller Slate Belt area plan to address the issue and create a smaller project that might be used by other areas of the county and do it efficiently and possibly set a standard others can copy. Sometimes a smaller model works as well or better than a larger one. This issue is a unifying one as every gov't entity struggles with animal control and the costs associated with it. We're gonna try.
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