Fed Ed Removes Basketball Rims at Andre Reed Park

If there's one thing I love more than anything else about Allentown, it's Summer League basketball. Last night, teams played indoors because of threatening weather. I sat next to a New Jersey couple who have been coming for years. They see at least six games every week, and are on a first name basis with many of the players. There's no entrance fee and parking is free, so it's a great melting pot. You can see prominent attorneys like zoning genius Bill Malkames sitting and chatting amiably with a garbageman. Ray O'Connell is there a few days every summer, especially if the Canaries are playing. Pretty young girls flirt with the players between games. It's a wonderful opportunity, not just for the kids, but for the entire community to come out and support their teams in a relaxed atmosphere. And the games? They might actually be better than the ones played during the regular season.

Allentown does have minor league hockey and baseball, and those venues do attract crowds. But it is mostly from out-of-town. Let's face it, inner city people have little interest in hockey. Allentown is primarily a basketball town. It's an exciting game and costs next to nothing. The kids start early, when they are five or six. If there was less transiency, both Allen and Dieruff would be indomitable.

One person I've never seen in the years I've attended Allentown basketball games is Mayor Edwin "Fed Ed" Pawlowski. He has little, if any, understanding how important this sport is to Allentown youth as well as young adults. If he had a clue, he would never have removed the rims from the outdoor courts at Andre Reed Park, next to Dieruff High School, as reported in The Morning Call. That's where the local high school freshman play as part of the summer league series.

Fed Ed stated he has done so in response to complaints from neighbors across the street. He met with them at a house where one of his political house parties took place. He claimed that “out of the area teenagers and adults” were the real culprits, and that other communities have been plagued by them as well.

I smell a bullshit burger. Palmer Pump Park and Saucon Park had to close because people from New York City were treating those parks and their creeks as day vacation destinations. No creek runs through Andre Reed Park. The teenagers and adults playing there are almost certainly from Allentown or a nearby community, just as kids from Allentown will come to Nazareth to play pickup basketball.

Fed Ed is using the authority of his office to screw kids who like to play basketball, in a basketball town, to placate his campaign supporters. It's what I'd expect from someone who steered contracts to other campaign supporters, as nine people will testify.

These desperadoes apparently parked on the grass to shine their lights on the court when Fed Ed cut the lights.

Now Fed Ed claims police were there, and handed out numerous tickets "to no avail."

I smell another bullshit burger. Police could easily have told these players that the park is closed and they need to go. And if they were handing out tickets, it should be easy to establish that these players are all local.

"My goal is to ultimately move the basketball courts away from the impacted residential areas," Fed Ed declaims. That totally defeats the purpose of having a neighborhood park in the first place. There should be more than a few swing sets.

Dennis Pearson, a community activist who lives near Andre Reed Park, was ignored by Fed Ed when he met with his campaign supporters. Had he spoken to Pearson, he'd know that parking in that neighborhood can be an issue. On Sunday, for example, "there were a large number of swimmers, a drum and bugle band practiced hard for a long time that day taking up much parking space on Andre Reed Way and a youth development tournament enticed many teams to participate ... Unfortunately on this day the fans caused the problem by parking where they were not allowed."

As Pearson observes, "parks are built to be used, but respected... Anybody that lives by a park should know this ... Andre Reed Park is a park which is surrounded on three sides by residential units without much separation between the park and the residential units... These residents have no right to take the park away from kids, but those kids or adults whom abuse their privileges should be denied further privilege."

The rims need to be restored. If people play after hours when the park is closed, cite them.

End of story.

Everyone was there to watch Uncle Drew.