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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

NorCo Council: Workhorses, Showhorses & No-Showhorses of 2013

Parsons gives me the hairy eyeball
Who are Northampton County Council's workhorses, showhorses and no-showhorses in 2013? What is their attendance, including Committee participation, where most of the real work is done?

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:

Anonymous said...

Peg Ferraro had a dismal record and kicked up for her reelection. Next year she will be back to her old ways.

Shameful!!!

Anonymous said...

Scott Parsons is one hot bear.

Northampton County is loaded with bears and they are hoties!

Anonymous said...

Pass a resolution asking the court to

Free Greggy.

End the persecution. Has he not suffered enough at the hands of the system?

Anonymous said...

3:45, What are you smoking? and can you get let me know who your dealer is?

Anonymous said...

You can tell Peg was up for re-election.

Anonymous said...

Somebody lonely since their pig died?

Bernie O'Hare said...

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.

Anonymous said...

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.

Anonymous said...

Yah, Greggy was high voltage and destroyed his chances.

Anonymous said...

Most voters turned against her after the "fine candidate" started talking about shooting a 14 yr. old schoolgirl.

Jimmania said...

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

Anonymous said...

3:45 AM and 5:45 PM

Seriously, what are you guys smoking? I gotta get some!

Anonymous said...

I think it is safe to say that you have been tampered with @ some point in your life.

Bernie O'Hare said...

Tricia is obviously off her meds again.

Dave Houser said...

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.

Dave said...

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..

Jimmania said...

Pegasus has a set of cans that could land her a waitress gig at Hooter's, she has my vote and full attention.

Anonymous said...

I think I just barfed up some chicken wings.

Bernie O'Hare said...

"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.

Dave Houser said...

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.

Dave said...

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.