Revitalizing Allentown

This post is my opinion on what the city needs to do to revitalize Allentown.

I think the city needs to focus on a few issues and concentrate on these issues to revitalize the city. Below are the issues I think the city needs to address if they want to revitalize the city.

I think they need to:

1. Deal properly with the run-down vacant properties in the city as tax revenue is often lost on vacant properties.

2. Aggressively attack quality of life issues such as graffiti, litter, trashed properties, illegal dumping, and parking problems.

3. Create a more inviting environment for visitors visiting the city such as offering free parking for a few hours near the downtown areas.

4. Push for more home owned properties throughout the city.

5. Aggressively deal with the absentee landlords and slumlords in the city.

Above are five things I think the city needs to do if they want to revitalize Allentown. Building a hockey arena and office buildings is not going to bring back Allentown. Run-down vacant properties affect the city in many ways by decreasing property values, infest more crime, safety & fire hazards, reduce city tax revenue, and negatively affect the quality of life for city residents and visitors.

Having graffiti, litter, trashed properties, and trashed neighborhoods also are quality of life issues I think the city needs to focus on. Having all of these in many of the center city neighborhoods is not an attractive site for residents or visitors.

The city needs to create a more inviting environment for people visiting the city. One thing I think they should do is offer free parking for a few hours in parking decks close to the downtown areas. This would allow visitors to come into the city and park worry free while they shop at the local shops and eat at the local restaurants throughout the downtown area.

Right now the city is 52% rental with over 27,000 rental properties in the city. It is a known fact that home owned properties raise property values and home owned properties are usually more well kept then rental units. I think the city needs to push for more home owned properties.

I think they need to aggressively deal with absentee landlords and slumlords. The city keeps saying they are working on a plan and trying to do everything they can legally however myself and the VP of the Allentown Tenant Association we run have presented them with multiple ideas and multiple strategies used in other cities with success. It is time to stop beating around the bush with the issue and attack it aggressively.

We want businesses to come into the city and we want people to visit the city but if we don't deal with the issues mentioned then nether are going to happen as much as they could. I hear from people who live outside of the city all the time telling me they don't come into Allentown unless they really have to.

Allentown School District - Dropout Issue

This post is about the dropout issue with the Allentown School District. The last known data on the dropout rate was reported as 7.2 percent in 2011-2012 and about 88 percent of those dropouts provided no official reason for leaving school. The dropout issue has been an issue in Allentown for many years but it is not until now that it is getting so much attention. 

Ce-Ce Gerlach one of the school board members recently introduced a resolution to begin a comprehensive dropout analysis and plan of action. It also asked the Lehigh County commissioners to form a County Dropout Prevention Task Force, which would include representatives from school districts and several county agencies, such as children and youth services.

Director Scott Armstrong introduced his own dropout resolution, citing high poverty rates and asking the city of Allentown to develop a comprehensive plan to reduce poverty. The Armstrong resolution called on the county to assist the city with those efforts.

Both resolutions were tabled and will not go into effect.

In my personal opinion regarding the dropout issue the school district and the city need to work together to solve the problem. They could create a city wide task force instead of a county task force but we can create all the task forces we want if we don't get out there and find out why the children are dropping out we will never be able to solve the problem. 

I think they need to get out there and ask dropouts why they dropped out and also ask current students in the school district if they have considered dropping out and if so why. Once we find the answers to why they are dropping out then measures can be taken to prevent future dropouts. There are multiple factors that play a role into a student dropping out. There is not a one answer to the question. It could be for various reasons such as: stress overpowers them, can't take the pressure, find school boring and not of interest, issues at home such as family problems, poverty, moving too much due to financial problems or landlord problems, and the list goes on.

Right now the school district is using two grant-funded programs that are aimed at keeping students in school and graduating from high school. At the last school board meeting they kept talking about prevention which of course we need to use prevention techniques to help keep students in school but we need to find out why they dropout to understand the scope of the problem. Again they need to get out there and find out why they are dropping out. I am a former dropout of the school district and when I was missing alot of school, no one asked me why. No one tried to get me to go to school except my parents and no one asked why I was dropping out when I did. Do I regret the decision? Yes but my point is no one asked why.

Once we find out why they dropout then we can put prevention measures into place to prevent the students from dropping out. So let's talk with the students and find out why and then go from there. Parents also play a major vital role in their children dropping out or not. I am calling for all parents who have children attending Allentown schools to talk with your children and ask them if they have considered dropping out and if so why. Then report your findings to the school district. Get involved! 

Quality of life issues.

I think the city needs to focus more on quality of life issues in the city such as graffiti, illegal dumping, trashed properties, littering, & run-down properties. All of these issues affect us in many ways. Property values decline, discourages business development, negative appearance, lowers pride, and are both safety & health concerns.

Right now the city has a sweep department within recycling that deals with the issues mentioned however they only have three sweep officers that cover three districts in the city. The city says the sweep officers are proactively and on a complaint basis addressing the quality of life issues mentioned. According to the city their normal response time to a complaint is within a 24 hour period. According to the city 6000 tickets were issued covering 8000 violations last year. However the mayor gave a different number when asked. According to the mayor over 7500 sweep tickets were issued covering 13,455 violations. So why are the sweep department numbers different from the mayor's numbers? I will leave that answer up to you.
The police, health, animal control, and engineering also give out sweep tickets to residents.

In my opinion the sweep program is not effective enough and is not utilized correctly. There are residents in the city that have gotten sweep tickets for minor issues such as leaving a can of paint outside but there are properties in the city that have piles and piles of trash & debris. I don't understand how the sweep officers are not noticing glaring violations but can notice a can of paint on a sidewalk.

My opinion is the sweep department needs to be scraped and a quality of life unit within the police department needs to be created. The quality of life unit would be supervised by an Allentown police officer with a rank of sergeant or higher. The unit would have QOL officers that are civilian officers. The QOL unit would patrol the streets and proactively search for quality of life violations in progress and stop those activities from happening. They would also respond to complaints as well. If the QOL officers required any police assistance they could use radios to call in for assistance and would have direct communication with our communications center. The idea is to stop the activity while it's happening and not after it already happened.

The civilian officers would go through training on how to keep on the look out for violations and how to address the violations. They would also go through self defense training in case they would get attacked while on the streets patrolling. Each section of the city would have at least one officer patrolling at all times keeping a look out for quality of life violations.

The city needs to show residents and property owners that we are not going to tolerate behaviors that lead to quality of life issues in the city and that we will take action. Right now people know they can trash the city and get away with it. The city doesn't enforce the ordinances we have in place strictly enough. To them the city is a joke. It is time to change that attitude towards the city.

Parking Authority considering changes to Parking Regulations.

The Allentown parking authority is considering changing enforcement hours to run Monday through Saturday from 8 am to 9 pm, expanding acceptable forms of payments, modifying the notice of violations provisions, and changing  the fine for the parking of inoperable or illegally registered vehicles.

In this post I give my opinion in all of the considered changes to the parking regulations. I will go over each change.Right now, folks without a permit have to feed parking meters between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. A change in an ordinance proposed this week would require drivers to pay through 9 p.m.

I do not agree with this change. Parking in the city can be a hassle at times as it is. I think it will discourage people from visiting the city since they will have to worry about getting a ticket even later in the evening if approved to go to 9PM. It might discourage residents from going to city meetings since they will have to worry about their vehicle parked outside city hall while in the meetings. Another problem is the 30 minute meters have a sensor that you can only park in the same spot for 30 minutes and then must move the vehicle. You can't just put more money in and gain another 30 minutes. The samething applies for the regular meters but on those you get up to two hours and then must move the vehicle. This just creates more of a hassle for city residents then good. Basically if I attend a city meeting at 7PM and I park in a 30 minute meter spot I am going to have to exit the meeting in the middle of it just to move my car to another spot. That is unacceptable and ridiculous. It is bad enough we must pay to park on a public street that our tax dollars pay for to have to feed the parking authority more money late into the evening hours. Again I am totally against this idea and think it would be a bad move to approve it.

Next considered change I will go over is: Fines for parking broken down or illegally registered vehicles may also go up, and not every ticket could be placed on your windshield if the ordinance goes through.This change I am not totally against but do question parts of it. It says fines for parking broken down vehicles would go up. So what they are saying is if your vehicle breaks down and you can't have it towed that same day you will get a fine? I never had this happen to me so I didn't even know they fine you for this but that's not fair. It may not be your fault if your vehicle breaks down. Then they are going to fine you for something out of your control? I don't agree with this fine going up. I don't agree they should even fine you in the first place. Regarding illegally registered vehicles I don't have an issue with the fine being raised because there are alot of people who don't get their vehicle registered and don't care. It is the law to have your vehicle registered and have insurance so I have no problem with the fine being raised for that part of it. I do have a concern regarding not every ticket being placed on the windshield though. If you get a ticket and they don't put it on your windshield how are you going to know you have a ticket? I need to find out more information on that before posting an opinion on it.

Of course I have no problem with them expanding the acceptable forms of payment. The more options we have to pay for the meters the better. Alot of people don't carry cash or change so it would be a good idea to give the residents additional ways to pay for parking.

Not sure what they are considering in modifying for the notice of violation provisions so I don't want to comment on that either until I know more information. Like I said I am against changing the hours for the meters. 6PM is long enough to have the meters active. The parking authority says they are considering this change cause they are trying to protect people who live near the arena so the parking near their homes won't be clogged. I think that is a bogus excuse. They are trying to change the hours because of money. They know if they change the hours they will make more money off of residents and people visiting. It will only hurt the residents rather then protect them as they will have to worry about parking even more in this city. 

In my honest opinion I think the meters should be removed and instead regulate a parking time limit in certain areas. For example "downtown" they could give a three hour parking limit. That would give residents and people visiting a three hour window to shop and eat "downtown". Certain other areas like outside city hall and the court house could have a time limit as well but I think the meters need to go. Also maybe instead of making things harder for us residents to park the parking authority and the city should brainstorm ideas on how to create more parking for residents and visitors but then again all they care about is the money, when the Executive Director is making 100,000 a year salary I wonder why.

If you have concerns regarding these changes come out to the public works committee meeting on Wednesday,  April  9,  2014 at 5:30 PM in Council Chambers.

Allentown Police & Crime

This post is about the Allentown Police Department and crime in the city. This is a general post of the police department and crime. I will be making future posts going more in depth on certain issues.

In my personal opinion we have a police force with alot of dedicated officers. However there are some changes I personally would like to see with the police department. I feel they need to utilize community policing to the fullest. We need officers on the streets on foot interacting with residents and getting to know neighborhoods where the most crime happens. I understand that this is going on now but just hope it continues and we see more of it.

I am not sure if there is an official gang unit or not but if there isn't then I think we need one. The police department needs to have officers dedicated to gang prevention and gang related crimes. I am looking at the city website and don't see a gang unit listed under their divisions and units so I am not sure if there is one.

One thing I have always said the city needs to do is utilize social media to their advantage. The police department does now have a facebook page which I am glad to see but just hope they continue to utilize it to get information on unsolved crimes. For anyone interested the facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/allentownpolice  

I would like to see more police operations throughout the city as they did in the past where they would hit the streets hard with alot of officers and raid known drug houses. They did this a few years ago and coordinating with the state police. They used their helicopter and were on the look out for crimes in progress. I would like to see more operations such as this take place and would like to see the vice unit do more raids. Send the message to these criminals that we will not tolerate the criminal activity.

I think the youth division of the police department needs to be more proactive and go to the schools in the city. Interact with the children and prevent them from getting into a gang or committing a crime later on down the road.

I am hopeful with the new police chief we have and hope he puts his expertise to use. I have met him and he is a nice guy who seems to care about the police department. He has promised more community policing so I hope to see that soon.

Also residents you need to get involved. Join a community watch group in your area and report suspicious activity.

Housing & Business Decline

My first post is about the housing and business decline in the city. Allentown was once a booming thriving city that had well known successful businesses and historic well kept housing. Throughout the years the housing and business development has seen a decline. This is reflected with current property values throughout the city. We all can remember Hess store that was located at 9th and Hamilton. It was sad to see such a great store go.

In the 1980s the city allowed for too many conversions of single family homes into multi-unit apartment buildings creating a decline in home ownership which also affected property values. In my personal opinion this is when the downfall of the housing stock started. The city thought that more rentals would bring more people which would bring more tax dollars being spent however the opposite happened. It did bring more people but it also allowed for too many rentals throughout the city. Big mistake of that city administration.

Because of all the rentals the city had to start a rental inspection program. This program was working and was making progress but the program is not being utilized correctly today. We have rentals in this city going 10+ years without being inspected. This is due to the low manpower of code enforcement. Also I feel code enforcement is being directed wrongly by the city administration. The city has seen more blight in the recent years then it ever had. It is a known fact that urban blight contributes to more crime and discourages business development. I feel the city needs to get a handle on the current blight issue if they want to save Allentown.

We all are fully aware of the hockey arena and office/apartments being built downtown currently but it will not save the city. The city must improve the housing stock throughout center city and the rest of the city that has pockets of blight. If we do not handle the blight issue correctly then Allentown will continue to see a decline in it's housing stock.

So what do we do now? I think the city needs to be strict with the rental program we have. Show the slumlords and absentee landlords that we will not tolerate their neglect of our housing stock. We need to hire more code enforcement inspectors since the city is currently 52% rental which is about 27,000 rental units in the city. The city needs to enforce the city ordinances that we have instead of ignoring them. The city needs to hold neglecting property owners accountable for their actions as well as renters who trash the city. One thing myself and the organization I am president of is looking into is creating a quality of life unit within the police department to address quality of life issues such as illegal dumping, littering, graffiti, etc. Right now I personally feel the sweep department within recycling is not effective enough.

I don't think people realize that the housing and business decline affect the city in many ways. It affects property values, the tax base, crime element, our school system, etc.