Blogger's Note: The following is my first installment of Opinions Online, which I hope to make a regular Saturday feature. If you'd like to express your opinion on any topic, click on the Opinions Online button on my left sidebar. I am also taking five comments from throughout the week and re-publishing them here.
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I like cheese.
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It seems so odd that a woman as paranoid as Hillary Clinton would not have kept every document She ever was associated with filed somewhere.She has had 30 + of obstructing criminal investigations and has to have the documents needed for a criminal defense.
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Please interview Ron Angle and get his opinion on the National Penn/BB&T merger. Will his stock go up? Did they merge so that Ron will not attend anymore NatPenn stockholder meetings?
Hereford John
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Parking in downtown Allentown ought to be free throughout the NIZ, not just for Reilly-Ruled properties.
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My views on the political rights attacks on Socialism backed with facts.
Not just my Opinion but actual numbers as well.
http://worldofweirdwonders.blogspot.com/2015/08/socialist-countries-are-failing-you-say.html
~Elijah LoPinto
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Northampton County has wasted millions on the 911 system. Your asshole buddy Seyfried started it, Brackbill implemented it for 45 million, Reibman screwed it up and cost 10 million, a new center was built for more millions and staffed with in-experienced workers, now we might be asked to go into a regional 911 center with Lehigh County. How many millions must we spend before we get an efficient 911 system?
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Bobble-head elected officials are increasingly the norm in Allentown. Not only in city council but on the school board as well. Seems they have their own motivation for running for office and then essentially doing nothing of any substance to protect the interests of the tax payer and residents of the city. Not too difficult a job, just sit there and say "Yes" to either the mayor or superintendent. Then they seem to end up accusing each other of exactly what they themselves are doing.
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As a resident I am also mildly annoyed by the weekly trash that the Morning Call deposits on my lawn. It's like a weekly ritual, pick up their little trash bag and deposit it in my bigger trash bag. The township can solve this easily with a new ordinance, such as: Any periodical that is delivered to the property of a resident without their consent by means other than the US Mail is considered a littering offense and subject to the fines/penalties thereof.
I'm tempted to go to the next meeting to pitch this and have Hudak call me a piece of crap so I can call him a f*cking asshole in return. That would be neat.
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You know who are true heroes? Firefighters. They constantly risk their lives, save others and they do it all without a gun.
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Today's one-liner: "The shortest way to the distinguishing excellence of any writer is through his hostile critics." Richard LeGallienne
Local Government TV
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Saturday, August 22, 2015
23 comments:
You own views are appreciated, especially if they differ from mine. But remember, commenting is a privilege, not a right. I will delete personal attacks or off-topic remarks at my discretion. Comments that play into the tribalism that has consumed this nation will be declined. So will comments alleging voter fraud unless backed up by concrete evidence. If you attack someone personally, I expect you to identify yourself. I will delete criticisms of my comment policy, vulgarities, cut-and-paste jobs from other sources and any suggestion of violence towards anyone. I will also delete sweeping generalizations about mainstream parties or ideologies, i.e. identity politics. My decisions on these matters are made on a case by case basis, and may be affected by my mood that day, my access to the blog at the time the comment was made or other information that isn’t readily apparent.
At the 911 center comment. Its about time people see how incompetent that place is. Im glad to see the issues is coming to light.
ReplyDeleteGood comment Schwab
DeleteCheck into their hiring process, it is a joke. Qualified people have been turned away to make room for insiders. There needs to be an investigation of the top people.
ReplyDeleteI like cheese too.
ReplyDelete@ 140am, yes that Center who people rely on for emergencies needs to be looked in to. Bad bad place where its ok to make your job a social function for fun and god knows what else those people do at night and the tax payers are paying for it. Rumors have it that its a place to hook up and collect a paycheck on the taxpayers. I listen to the scanner at knight and here a lot of things that cause me great concern for the residents thank god I live in Lehigh county.
ReplyDelete"As a resident I am also mildly annoyed by the weekly trash that the Morning Call deposits on my lawn."
ReplyDeleteI'm more than mildly annoyed. Those things are dangerous. They are burglar beacons. As a frequent traveler who'd prefer not to advertise when I'm away from home, I request a hold on my mail and put lights on timers. It doesn't matter. Left where they were thrown, the plastic wrapped garbage from litterers for The Express-Times and The Morning Call, serve as calling cards for criminals. Your township will tell you to call the number on the garbage to stop delivery you never requested. It doesn't work. If you can get them to stop at all, it's only temporary because their paid litterers change often and have the intellect of amoebas. They simply throw trash on every property they speed past. They're likely casing your neighborhood at the same time.
I challenge Bernie or his readers to supply the home addresses of Tim Ryan, Ludmilla Perez, David Erdman, Alfred Kratzer, Jim Deegan, and David Yanoshik, so that victims of their litter may recycle the unwanted garbage on the lawns of these litter gang leaders. No threats. No violence. Just a quick drive by to return the unwanted trash.
I love cheese as well. I cold smoke cheese with apple wood, it's amazing.
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted you to have Open Mike Friday so thank you thank you thank you.
ReplyDeleteNow for my first question directed towards the Allentown Public Library board,
what is happening to the South Side library? It now has symbolically been bricked to cover all windows, a storm door installed, and a sign announcing ASD.
Scott Armstrong, please would you explain? Also, why haven't South Side parents demanded a satellite library? Bethlehem has one.
You take a man who was a deputy sheriff and you make him the god over the 911 center and all you an expect is disaster after disaster. You get what you pay for. It was a political appointment of a political hack.How much money was wasted at the 911 center. A reader stated it started with Seyfried and continued through brackbill and Reibman then continued with Stoffa. My god, that's over 20 years.
ReplyDeleteI was very involved in the development of 911 in Northampton County. To clear up some things the Seyfried Adim. spent a couple of 100,000 dollars on consultants and became bogged down in politics which caused a failure to launch. Brackbill put committee of citizens together to formulate a comprehensive County run 911 system. Since I sat on the committee I am biased, but believe a very effective plan was forwarded to County Council. May I add at no cost to taxpayers. It was attacked by then Council President Reibman, who had his eye already on the Executives job, so he could pander to the residents of the Slate Belt. The proposal was for 13 million dollars. The plan was scrapped by Council and instead an RFP was put out to solicit bids for a privatized system. It was then awarded to a company that charged the County 17 million dollars. The Reibman Admin took over and through out the contractor and had to buy out the remaining time of the contract, several million dollars. It than implemented a County run plan that amazingly looked much like the Brackbill plan, for I believe the 20 million dollar range. Now they want to combine with Lehigh County.
ReplyDeleteAs to whether this is a good or bad idea I have mixed feelings. I know from the history of regionalization that no matter what is told to the public there will not be any great economic savings. On the other hand if and only if the consolidation allows for improvements in technologies and efficiencies then it could be a positive. The other question is will the voices of the emergency service workers be drown out by the number of voices served? The elected officials of both Counties must make sure that any effort to consolidate must be transparent and the voices of the real end users, emergency service personnel must be not only heard, but listened to.
Message to Mike Krill from Gerald Seyfried
ReplyDeleteMike, I don't know where you get your information from, and as far as anyone else commenting on this Blog, they are pretty screwed up as to the involvement of my administration when it comes to financing a 911 system. Yes, I saw the need for a 911 system and I am proud to say I started the ball rolling on 911. That in itself is quite an accomplishment because everyone else avoided planning for a 911 system and ducked their heads in the sand because it was quite controversial. The County had to combine all the municipalities into one center and eliminate all the other municipal communication centers. The municipalities (especially Blue Mtn) were very upset with us. The work we did on 911 was all done in house by our staff. Where you get several hundred thousands dollars is pure folly. We signed a contract for a vendor to provide us with information and that contract was for a maximum of ten thousand dollars. We never exceeded the contract price.
The name of the consultant was R.A.M. Communications, when I arrived on scene there was still $25,000 remaining on the contract. Just because some of it was done inhouse does not mean there were not costs involved. Alan Fowler was a full time employee and was assigned duties to plan for 911. That was part of the cost.
ReplyDeleteMike
ReplyDeleteThere is no way those costs were anywhere in the neighborhood of "hundreds of thousands of dollars". As I stated, almost all the work was done in house with no additional staff. We were quite frugal. You obviously have my administration mixed up with the Brackbill administration, who signed a contract for 45 million dollars after attending a football game at the Fiesta bowl with the service provider for 911. We never spent more than $10,000.00.
I am very clear on this and there is no point in arguing over a few dollars, but to make it clear I said a couple of 100,000 not several. I believe the RAM contract was for 75,000 which 25,000 remained when Brackbill took over. Add in the in house costs and you are over 100,000. The point is a lot of money was wasted during the political fight instead of building a better system. A real waste. In the end I calculated that 25 million was wasted over ten years of political fighting over the system. would you not agree
ReplyDeleteThe privatization of the original Northampton County 911 system was corrupt from the start. The vendor chosen just so happened to be a dealer in a certain brand of radio equipment. They came to the police departments that were about to switch to the new system, and told them that they would need a certain type of radio. Their rationale was that the equipment had to be able to work on a particular type of system, of which the only the brand of radio that would work, would be brand that the vendor sold. The price of these radios was nearly double the cost of conventional equipment, but the vendor offered to finance them for you. This would eliminate the opportunity for other brands to compete for the business. Thanks to the other brands vendors' threat to sue, this never happened, and it made radio equipment more affordable to comply with the unfunded mandate.
ReplyDeleteThe 911 system should never have been privatized. It was a disaster from the start. County Council tried to tell Brackbill but he was stubborn and the media supported his position that all opposition was just partisan politics.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate that the county had to spend so much to finally get it right.
Let me get this straight. Seyfried wanted 911 but he couldn't get the support of Council so he had his own staff do much of the work to get it started. Bethlehem wanted their own 911 center so they wouldn't participate. Blue Mtn. wanted to run the show so they were against everything the County proposed. Brackbill signed a contract with a company that lined their own pockets after the Company treated Brackbill to Fiesta Bowl tickets. Reibman payed the Company 10 million dollars so he could fire them. Yeah, lets throw Seyfried under the bus with the rest of these guys because he started the whole process of 911. As I stated earlier, he is O'hares asshole buddy so he won't get any negative reply's from O'hare.
ReplyDeleteOh by the way, is this the same Mike Krill that was a fireman in Easton and part of the Brackbill clique? He had more to do with government waste on 911 than all the others put together. He was in cohoots with Brackbill and the 42 million paid out for the Fiesta Bowl Contract.
Had Brackbill not signed that contract, you still wouldn't have 911. He shouldn't have accepted the invitation to the Fiesta Bowl but someone had to move off ground zero. They ought to name the 911 center after him.
ReplyDeleteTime to scrutinize some Palmer Township Supervisors. Culver has done his job lately but who sits back just voting with the majority? Attendance records will reveal "A TIME FOR A CHANGE"
ReplyDeleteYou people still fighting over 911?? Give it a rest already. Seyfried's buddy claimed to have a plan but it was nothing but a dream. Give Brackbill credit for moving with it. However, he screwed up the deal because the private company was a joke. Reibman spent a ton of money as usual.
ReplyDeleteIn the end we finally have it the way it should be. The real problem now is the management at the center. The place needs to be cleaned out.
@6:43, you speak nonsense. 911 was mandated by the state, and Northampton county had no choice but to implement it.
ReplyDelete@4:44,
ReplyDeleteBlue Mountain Control Center was another private enterprise that wanted the $$$ that would have been paid to the other private company. I could never figure out why the people of the northern part of the county insisted on paying for a private dispatching service, when the county provided it for decades at no direct cost.
11:30 AM
ReplyDeleteYou are the most misinformed person on this Blog. 911 was not mandated. The County got into it voluntarily in the early 90's. Again what I said earlier is factual.