Billy Givens Watches Riverwalk Sink

Easton's controversial Riverwalk project has finally taken a hike, but not before $1.2 million in public funding has been flushed down the toilet and into the Delaware. Originally conceived as seven stories of condominiums, a bus terminal, retail shops and a parking deck, it remains a parking lot located in a flood zone.

Last night, Northampton County Council introduced an ordinance to reacquire that sinkhole-infested parking lot for the $595 thousand it received when former County Exec Glenn Reibman decided to sell it. It made no difference to him that the parking lot was being used by county workers at the adjacent Governor Wolf building.

Amazingly, this parking lot was also in a KOZ, and that was enough to draw the Lehigh Valley's original blogger, Billy Givens, out of retirement. He wanted to see for himself what was happening.

Before Billy discovered the Internet, he regularly regaled passers by in the Easton circle with a bullhorn his daughter gave him as a birthday gift. He littered offices everywhere with daily editions of his Billy Bytes newsletter, using a mimeograph machine from some office downtown. He hated our local newspapers, which he called The Excess Times and Morning Call Girl. They were mouthpieces and whores for local business bigwigs. Naturally, he was rewarded by being named a Bill White Hall of Famer. But he was brash. I once had to pull him out of the street during an antiwar demonstration when he got into a name-calling contest with a motorcycle gang member. Mayor Sal Panto had to persuade a police captain from locking him up. He's spent years taking "chunks out of those who hold themselves up as models of probity." That includes me.

Two years ago, after I deleted a few of his off-topic rants, he sent me an email entitled "Bernie O'Hare, Please Stay Off Your Bicycle, Even If Your Ass Is As Wide As You Are Tall." He then unloaded on me and, just for the hell of it, included Easton's college hill elite.

I know you're running away from me, but you're not going to be able to hide forever.

Up here in Easton's silk-stocking neighborhood of College Hill, where I live with my blue-blooded, Brahmin neighbors like Phil Mitman, Danny Cohen, and Sandy Woodring, they have their noses stuck so far up the ass of Lafayette College that if it made an abrupt left or right turn without signaling it would break their noses.

I'm from Alabama, the home of former heavyweight boxing champion of the world, who used to say of his opponents in the ring: "You can get on your bicycle and run, but you can't hide."

Get the idea? Billy received a warm reception from Northampton County Council last night, which more than once had a deputy sheriff escort him from the podium. .

During an executive session, he posed for this picture with moi, and as you can see, we both know the bloggers' salute.

Two miserable bastards.

Dennis Lieb: Is Easton's Riverwalk Floating Away?

Dennis Lieb attended Tuesday night's Easton Parking Authority (EPA) meeting, and has the only first-hand account: "At tonight's parking authority meeting, representatives of Rizzetto Construction and Tim Haas (garage architect) informed the EPA that project cost is now $29 million!!!

"This is about double the original estimate of 2005, and contingencies (like a sinkhole-prone site) could drive it up even more. They also told EPA that very few local firms can now get bonding for projects over $20 million (something they avoided saying at the January historic review public meeting), that concrete has increased 400% in a year, that steel framing and pilings, rebar, concrete and architectural precast panels are being re-priced on a week-to-week basis and the soonest they can get deliveries is at least 12 months out. I knew all this would happen two years ago when the same people told the LANTA board virtually the same thing at a meeting in Mayor Mitman's conference room, but no one listened to me.

"After this delightful news, EPA's solicitor read a letter received today from Concord Finance - the group providing the bridge loan of $5 million to get this thing started while additional revenue is sought. Concord has concluded that the rising funding gap (now at least $15 million) means that EPA will not be able to cover debt service for the loan out of projected parking revenue as they had previously promised. Concord will not be providing financing.

"After hearing all of this, EPA voted unanimously to once again reject all bids for the project.

"Strike two.

"They then went into closed executive session for 45 minutes to discuss the lawsuit filed by Riverkeeper Network. I'm sure they were trying to come up with a response to the November 30th hearing on the injunction to stop the project. (The public will receive a press release possibly tomorrow informing them that a federal judge has set a hearing date of 11/30/07 to address the motion by Riverkeeper Network for an injunction. The judge has not addressed any of the EPA's three motions for a dismissal.)

"EPA is in a very bad position, having spent lots of money to get nowhere. They tried to pass the buck to Rizzetto for not informing them sooner of the cost overruns but Rizzetto's honchos would have none of it and got pretty feisty, challenging Ferrone directly, telling him that they have been advising EPA since at least March that the project was well over the $23 million mark. They were not going to be EPA's scapegoat and things got pretty testy.

"So, right now we have no garage project in the form that Arcadia desires to have and we will have to see what EPA has up it's sleeve next. They didn't cancel the project...just rejected the bids. Whats next? Who knows, but we are going to court and will see what happens then.

"PS...No press showed up for this meeting. We called all the papers and Ed Seiger of the E-T eventually showed up to take some notes and interrogate the players after the meeting."

Ed Sieger's report, published in The Express Times, is located here. The Morning Call's Jarrett Renshaw, Easton's new beat reporter, also has a well-written report.