The Real State of the Shitty in Allentown

There were actually two State of the Shitty addresses delivered this weekend. The first was delivered by Fed Ed. The second came in the form of a rambling Morning Call op-ed. That was delivered by Alan Jennings, who is essentially the propaganda minister for the urban growth regime that's really in control in Allentown. I'll tell you about them and close with a more realistic view of the Queen City.

Fed Ed's State of the Shitty (WFMZ-TV69 Video - Part One and Part Two)

Allentown's Constitution, its Home Rule Charter, requires the Mayor to report every January, to both the City Council and the public, on "the financial and general condition of the City." Over the years, this mandate has been perverted into a gala event. This year, like last year, those who wished to hear Fed Ed's pearls of wisdom would have to pay for the privilege  It was thirty bucks a pop for a chicken lunch in the fifth floor ballroom at the $250 per night Renaissance Hotel.

I counted somewhere around 80 people at this event. But the actual paid attendance was just 56, far less than the 296 people who paid last year. The only elected official I saw was Lehigh County Exec Tom Muller. Not one member of City Council attended. Even people who work for the City made excuses not to be there, including the police chief (he was checking his sock drawer) and one other deputy chief (root canal). Local pols like Mike "Darth Voter" Schlossberg  and Pete Schweyer were busy getting pointers on ghost voting.  Jenn Mann was no doubt trying to score Superbowl tickets. Crony capitalists J.B. Reilly, Tony Iannelli, Lee Butz, union bosses and Bob Bennett were nowhere to be found. Alan Jennings, who controls the Lehigh Valley poverty industry, was also absent. But he was no doubt excused, as you'll see below.

His Goner's audience consisted mostly of rotarians, preachers and a few vultures like me, who were thinking it would be just like the FBI to come in and arrest him in the middle of his speech.

I saw no FBI agents, but noticed that a few of the waiters were speaking into flower arrangements. Downstairs, in the hotel lobby, Allentown good government activists Robert Trotner, Lou Shupe and a few others mounted a protest of some sort.

According to an unscientific poll on this blog, 94 percent of 150 participants believe that Fed Ed is going down, sooner or later. Sources tell me his lawyers are meeting with the feds this very week.

This was my first time inside a Neighborhood Improvement Zone (NIZ) building. Even from the fifth floor, there is a commanding view of the sea of decay surrounding this tiny, but $1 billion, oasis of splendor. A Potemkin Village with a sub-par minor league hockey team acting as its draw.

Fed Ed is actually the first person I saw when I finally found the fifth floor. I asked him when he is going to resign, but he walked right by me and into a nearby can, pretending not to hear. Next I bumped into a nervous Christine Bauder, who put together this event. I assured her that I'd be good. I don't like to disrupt speeches.

When I made it inside the ballroom, the first person to greet me was none other than Lisa "Lady MacBeth" Pawlowski. She has solved Allentown's homeless problem, by the way. Less than a year ago, she was misinforming people that I "get paid every time someone opens his blog. So every click is a win for him. Controversy means more money for him. So folks, if you support your mayor, don't ever read Bernie's blog. Make a statement by cutting into his income."

That's actually complete nonsense. I make no money blogging. Not everyone is as money hungry as she or her husband have been.

Lady McBeth never mentioned her insult, but was quick to introduce me to her daughter. She dragged both of their children to this State of the Shitty, which by itself has to be some form of child abuse. One friend tells me this was her way of taking a dig at me, and that her implied message was, "Look what you're doing to our children!"

If this is so, it failed. For the sake of their children, Fed Ed needs to resign.

Fed Ed, as most news accounts have already told you, failed to address the biggest problem facing Allentown - him. An investigation into political corruption has paralyzed the City. He avoided all mention of the elephant in the room, choosing instead to talk about the "cool factor." He joked a bit about the snow, but failed to address why he failed to call a snow emergency. This made it difficult for plow trucks to get through along snow emergency routes. While taking the media to task for not writing enough about the money saved by the water lease, he never explained how many trucks and personnel were shifted into the Lehigh County Authority and were hence unavailable to deal with the storm.

He bragged about a 30% drop in crime since becoming Mayor, although he failed to recognize that many people have simply stopped reporting.. He never addressing the crime going on at City Hall, in which three officials have been charged, along with an entrepreneur. He talked about purchasing additional cameras to reduce crime, but never discussed why he sweeping his offices for electronic bugs and purchased burner phones. Those seem more like the actions of a drug lord or Mafia don than the Mayor of Pennsylvania's third largest city.

But he is counting trees. This year, Fed Ed plans to nail down eactly how many trees there are in Allentown. So there you have it.

Embattled as he is, His Goner is playing the religion card heavily. The Moody Bible Institute grad made sure that lots of preachers came, and made sure to thank them. Among those he single out for applause was the Lehigh Conference of Church's Jack Felch, who "streeted"  about 30 homeless men into 31" of snow last week.

The audience applauded, save for one person.

Me. I booed.

He finished his speech with a slick upbeat video portraying Allentown (and no doubt Fed Ed) as a "comeback kid" made possible by the Neighborhood Improvement Zone (NIZ).

Alan Jennings' State of the Shitty.

Alan Jennings is Executive Director of CACLV, which effectively puts him in control of the poverty industry created by LBJ's War on Poverty. His organization has established many worthwhile programs, from Head Start to the Second Harvest Food Bank. Jennings likes to think of himself as the spokesperson for those who have no voice. But what he has really become is a shill for the wealthy. He is the Propaganda Minister of the urban growth regime.

Like a priest in the old Catholic Church before Martin Luther came along, Jennings sells plenary indulgences to the wealthy in exchange for a few table scraps tossed his way. These days, they're called tax credits. In a Morning Call op-ed, Jennings delivers his State of the Shitty.

Blessing the NIZ, Jennings goes on to say, "We can never overstate the heroic work being done by our mayor and his administration, state Sen. Pat Browne, J.B. Reilly of City Center Investment Corp., Sy Traub and the board of directors of the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone Development Authority and many others."

Heroic?

It takes no courage (much less, heroism) to spend someone else's money. When we start believing that those who spend the public's monies are "heroes," we are dead as a productive society.

I once portrayed Jennings in a pimp costume since he's been called the poverty pimp. But the reality is that he is more like a prostitute who sells himself out to the wealthy and praises them and their agendas in exchange for a few dollars here and there. He is a night-time walker dropped off on Hamilton while Fed Ed and J.B. Reilly circle the block until their trap is full.

Jennings continues to bless the NIZ, while taking an unnecessary shot at those who live in the suburbs in what increasingly appears to be a War on the Suburbs as opposed to a War on Poverty.

"Just about everyone has benefited: The tax base is on the mend, blight is being eliminated, jobs are being created. Fears about the whole effort being a disaster for the poached suburbs have not materialized. And, yes, people have gotten rich. You see, that's what happens when a market is robust. The best community development program is a viable market and, while we need our neighbors in the suburbs to stop cowering in their cul de sacs and come downtown to further strengthen its viability, we are on the right track."

To be clear, the whole effort has been a disaster, but not just for the poached suburbs. It's been a disaster in Bethlehem and in Allentown itself because the NIZ provides tax breaks for local businesses who move there. Jennings' offices are in South Bethlehem. If he looked out his window, he'd see the enormous difficulties the Benners and Perrucci are having in developing 900 new beds. Or the fact that, other than the Social Still, not a single CRIZ project has had shovel meet dirt. But facts are stubborn things.

Jennings wants a little affordable housing in exchange for his cheerleading. Do the math, Alan. Let's suppose 10,000 housing units in Allentown need serious rehab. Let's say, modestly, the cost of the average rehab is $25,000. That's $250 million! Where will that come from, Alan? From JB? Joe Topper? The Butzes? Mark Jaindl? Yeah, right. Oh, and where do the current tenants go after the rehab and the higher, unaffordable rent kicks in? Macungie? Emmaus?

The one thing that neither Jennings or Fed Ed bothers to address is Allentown's failing schools.

The Real State of the Shitty

Gentrification in Allentown is doomed to fail for the same reason it failed in the '70s, when two bona-fide historic districts were in in full on development mode - Old Allentown and Old Fairgrounds. The problem was and remains the Allentown School District (ASD). Once the brave pioneers - who weren't gay or lesbian couples - had kids, they realized those kids had to be educated in the ASD or a struggling Allentown Diocese school system, which was consolidating and closing schools. So they sold their restored historic houses, moved out of their restored historic apartments and left the once promising neighborhoods to the growing influx of transient "new residents" who were poorer, less educated and didn't care about the ASD or taking care of their property for that matter.

Many of the larger single family houses were converted to more multi-family housing - blame the City Zoning Hearing Board for that and the City administration for not stopping it - and the inexorable cycle of neighborhood decline got seriously worse. Meanwhile, back on Hamilton Street, the City focus continued to be on the downtown. "Forget the neighborhoods surrounding the Downtown," the experts scream. "If we don't save or improve Hamilton Street, the town is lost," they yell.

The opposite was and is true.

Allentown ignored its neighborhoods and the school district problems get so large that they became almost impossible to solve. So the City created KOZ property after KOZ property, investing massive amounts of State (RACP and DCED money) and Federal funds in one failed plan after another until Pat Browne and J. B. Reilly came up with the mother of all subsidies, the NIZ! Again, the focus was on Hamilton Street, not the neighborhoods and of course, here we go again.

For a few old-timers, it's "deja vu all over again." Only worse.