At their June 18 meeting, Northampton County Council voted 7-2 to select Alloy 5, a Bethlehem architectural firm, to design a new parking deck at the courthouse campus for a price of $463,000. Alloy 5 was the Council choice of three firms who selected bids. The two votes against this selection came from Council members John Goffredo and John Brown. The remaining 7 Council members voted Yes.
Public Works Director Michael Emili told Council that he (and a selection committee) favored Alloy 5 because it has "a ton of experience designing parking decks, particularly in the City of Easton" and is a local firm. But Goffredo, who also participated in that selection committee, preferred another architectural firm whose bid was "$100,000 lower than the other bids."
Goffredo argued that a low bidder should not be penalized for being the low bidder. But Council member Jeff Warren argued that bid was "aggressively low. That sends up a red flag to me."
Brown opposed the selection because of problems with the "internal process". He was opposed to borrowing money to pay for a new garage and should have used existing funds. Yet Brown has also argued that the county has no money. Which is it?
Alloy 5 founder Randy Galiotto and development director Bekah Rusnock gave a brief presentation. Galiotto, who grew up in Easton, reminisced about riding his bike in the garage as a kid. Rusnock noted that Alloy 5 has relationships with Lehigh County, Montgomery County and numerous municipalities, private businesses and nonprofits. The firm has designed over 5,000 parking spaces in the LV area. This includes the design for a parking deck that will actually be under a proposed stadium at Executive Education Charter School in A-town. The firm has designed 5 of 7 parking structures built in Easton over past 10 years.
Council member Ron Heckman agrees with Goffredo that "procurement is an imperfect process at best." But he suggested that no process is perfect and that he "always preferred local firms. ... We gotta' get this garage fixed. ... [It's] made of play doh."
The design process will take nine months. The garage itself will not be built until 2027.
32 comments:
Wow...463k and nine months just to design the damned thing???
This is some next level gaslighting s*** from County Council. They made a mess of the process by appointing a contractor to the selection committee - setting up inherent conflicts of interest.
The time has come for Northampton County to consider another site for their operations. They should keep their Judicial and Legislative functions at the present Easton location and move everything else to a more central location. The City of Easton passed a tax bill that discriminates against County Employees and the Offices on the hill don't do anything for downtown Easton business. The Gracedale Campus would be a much better location for Northampton County "Centralized Services" and let the Courts, and County Council along with the Court functions in Easton. You can level the present Parking Deck and save yourself a bundle of money. Hire a firm to do a study to see if it's feasible. After you look at and consider all the options, then and only then should you be considering spending half a million dollars for design work for something you may not need.
Does Brown even like himself?
Why does it cost 463K to put some numbers into a computer and run a program that spits out an architectural drawing, blueprints, and itemized list of costs and components at the push of a computer key?
No obligation to accept the lowest bid?
What's your name? You have all the answers and you should run for County Council. John Brown screwed up this County while being the Head of the government and now he's carrying his wacko ideas to another extreme. Do not vote for John the Clown Brown.
I agree- there are so many design programs now- I could've saved the County almost a half a Million dollars, and 9 months!
Excellent question.
Great idea
That needs to be explained publicly
Galiotto, Alloy5 Principal, is a quiet, behind the scenes but (kinda) big-time donor to a lot of local Democrat candidates. His donations are usually over $1,000, too, and I recall seeing his name with donation of $5,000 to someone in Northampton County but I can't find the right report. He was also Panto's campaign manager for the last time Sal ran for Easton mayor and rumor has it Galiotto is related to an incoming Easton city council member and donated $1,500 to that person's campaign as well. This guy appears to be quite connected and his firm is getting some juicy contracts. That's probably the real reason the low bidder didn't get the deal here. Too bad that the L.V. doesn't have local newspaper reporters to do investigative journalism anymore.
Design Program?? Lol, they arent designing a screen print for a tee shirt you morons.
So, the lowest bidder did not get the job.... because? Oh, the other company did work for the County before. Gee, maybe the new bidder wants to do work for the County, and thereby quoted aggressively.... all for naught. Good ol'e boy network still around! P.s. No one will quote now, since they don't get the work. Also, I like the idea above of moving departments out of Easton, it is like cramming a round peg into a square hole. Just because!!
Alloy 5 is good at contributing to the right campaigns. They know government work is gravy as there is less scrutiny since it's not their money being spent but instead the taxpayers.
Irresponsible council selects overspending. It seems that some may have been bribed. How else can you explain such an aggressively unfeeling attitude toward county taxpayers? This warrants an investigation. All phone records, emails, and bank records should be thoroughly examined. Maybe this is a clean deal. But it sure looks filthy dirty and deserving of an independent investigation. What wrong with a little daylight? In other news, the bidding process is completely worthless and irrelevant.
It was explained publicly numbskull.
That's a wild accusation. The real place to look is for campaign contributions from the firm to Dems. It's perfectly legal, but it's bad government that costs the taxpayers. Look out for something similar when the construction contracts are awarded to a union contributor.
Bingo!
If Trump would run again I would vote for him ever time we need bold leaders not your typical politician.
10:04 -- (I found what I was looking for). Galiotto (of Alloy5) gave the Reynolds campaign $4,500. No wonder his firm got the contract. He slithers about, unseen and undetected.
People want politicians instead of non-politicians' boy are they stupid.
I call "bullshit."
Vlad...please oennect the dots for us. Galiotto gives money to Reynolds 9the Mayor of Bethlehem), and so is rewarded by a contract award from...Northampton County??? Either those dots don't connect, or Reynolds and McClure have set up a campaign finance money laundering operation that would make Ed P blush.
Accusations are easy to throw out, much harder to even pass the vomit test.
12:13 - Alloy 5 gets plenty of work from Bethlehem and their Parking Authority so those dots are easy to connect when they donate to Woke Willie.
Randy sure is “everyone’s” friend and “connected”.. I.e. see Easton school district contracts with Alloy 5! Worth MILLIONS, not half a million, millions. How? Maybe because his and Robert Fehnel are both on NCC Board of Trustees? And yes Randy will become friends with anyone that shows support to his wallet.
LOL funny you say this in the middle of comments spewing claims of fraud and favoritism! Everything Trump stands for, illegal, illegal, illegal.. get a life
12:13 -- Noted; I had the councils mixed up. My SO says I shouldn't bourbon and keyboard at the same time. Moving on, I'm still new to how to research the donations and truss the connections. For now, I'll fess up and admit my mistake; I have no proof but I sense something shady.
Thanks Vlad. I've always respected your analysis. Although I'd like to ask anonymous 12.56pm what projects exactly did alloy5 get from the parking authority?
Randy Galiotto has donated tens of thousands of dollars to local democrat candidates, including school board candidates. Its a small investment on the millions in profits his contracts return with local municipalities and school districts. Taxpayer funded money laundering.
Galiotto donated $3000 to Lamont McClure for Congress on March 13th 2025.
8:32 -- I didn't find any Galiotto Lotto* donations to school board candidates but I didn't really dig too deeply either. I know his firm got the contracts for two Easton elementary schools and the boondoggle-to-be Easton $300 million high school project. He lives in Forks Twp. so if he donates to Forks candidates so be it. But, if he's donating to board candidates outside of where he lives, then that's unethical. Probably legal, if disclosed, but really a slimy act.
*Since he's such a big donor by local standards, any candidate whom he donates to should be required to shout "I won the Galiotto Lotto!"
Awwww you sound like an architect that isn’t good enough to get work. It’ll be ok
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