How do we safely move freight in Lower Macungie/Greater Lehigh Valley?

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For better or worse we’re now in the business of moving freight in Lower Macungie Twp. Much of our former agriculture land (which was at one time very high ROI, low impact and great for property values) is now or about to become warehouses. (very low ROI and extremely high impact terrible neighbors)

Moving freight is now a huge part of our local and regional economy. Because of that, local governments have to address the issue.

How do we achieve balance between the needs to move freight and safety/quality of life?

How do we achieve balance between the needs to move freight and safety/quality of life?

In Upper Macungie distribution warehouses probably always made sense due to a location directly adjacent to I-78 with direct highway access to all points N, S, E & W. In Upper Macungie they have the ability to separate the trucks from residential portion of the township. Here in Lower Macungie we are much further from interchanges. Therefore, trucks coming in and out of the township to and from the warehouses are frequently ending up on local residential roads. Day and night trucks rumble through Macungie and Alburtis intermingling with pedestrians and residential neighborhoods. In Lower Macungie we see them on local roads such as East Texas Rd, Spring Creek Rd, Sauerkraut Ln, Willow Ln ect.

In the next 10 years the amount of warehouses will double. The biggest of these mega warehouses are forecasted to generate up to 40 trucks an hour 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. The problem will only get worse.

We need answers. Moving forward how do we balance the needs of a safe, livable community with the need to efficiently move freight? I’m not sure there is a blueprint. Are there any other examples of areas that have gone this far overboard with distribution warehouses? 

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Gridlock stymies both progress and reform

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Most residents in PA support liquor store privatization and a severance tax on fracking. (both notions supported by polling)

Yet we get neither done. And barring a last minute effort by Gov. Corbett we once again kick the can down road concerning desperately needed pension reform.

Thank about it. PA remains the largest natural gas-producing state without a severance tax. We’re the only backwards state with full on state stores. Both very clear cut issues to most reasonable folks. But we get no action on either since neither entrenched side will ever blink.

Why? We have hyper partisanship and a special interest vice grip on PA politics.  Is it any wonder Independent registration is at record highs?

Shameful.

Moving forward the hyper partisan crowd will crow about “victories”. Meanwhile underlying issues worsen. No one really ‘wins’.

‘Progress’ for Democrats and ‘reform’ for Republicans are words associated with action forward. But because too many leaders are governed by self interest we again get neither. It’s a shame because basically we’re trying to get to the same place. That is a sustainable state budget not reliant on brinksmanship and games year in and year out. Whose gonna stop playing the games and lead?

 

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House bill proposes changes to Sunshine Law

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PA is a sunshine state. This requires by statute that government meetings are open to the public. This critically important concept ensures elected officials are transparent and accountable to voters.

PA’s sunshine laws require elected officials conduct official action and conduct deliberations leading up to official actions in the sunshine.

There are only a few justifications for holding private executive sessions. These include: Personnel matters, discussion of pending litigation, considering the purchasing or lease of land and labor and arbitration issues. 

H.B. 1671 sponsored by Rep. Rick Saccone (R), would more stringently define when a public body could enter private executive session meetings to conduct business. In recent testimony considering the bill widespread abuse of executive sessions was revealed across the Commonwealth. 

“The committee heard very detailed and disturbing testimony from reporters, organizations and citizens about instances where public bodies improperly went into executive session to circumvent  Sunshine Law,” said Saccone. “Abuse of executive session privilege appears to be widespread, with government entities apparently calling private meetings outside the bounds of the law Action clearly needs to be taken.” – Rep. Rick Saccone 

House Bill 1671 would streamline the definitions of instances when executive session can be used. It would also require an audio recording of the executive session so if an allegation arises that the meeting was improperly held, it can be verified later by a judge.

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Young residents want walkability.

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At last night’s meeting we had 5 letters that were very clearly a school (High School?) Social Studies project or something similar.

They were all in identical format and were physically mailed to the township which is what leads you to believe it was a project. They were also all very good. Thoughtful and thoroughly researched.

What was interesting is that 4 of the 5 dealt with walkability issues. When selecting a topic to write local gov’t about almost all decided to write asking for more walkability. This is in line with study after study that says young adults want to live in walkable/connected communities. 

It’s not surprising at all. Living on Lower Macungie Rd. and driving Brookside frequently you see scenes like the one below every single day. Whether it’s on foot, bike or here on a skateboard we have tons of walking on our corridors by young people in very unsafe situations.

In my opinion this currently represents a safety issue. Yes, we want to encourage more walking. But the fact is we already have ALOT of walking right now. Most of our arterial and connector roads are poorly equipped and fail miserably as complete streets. We need to think less in terms of “connector” and “arterial” and more in terms of Complete Streets and Boulevards. We need to work in partnership with Penndot to retrofit key corridor roads as multimodal complete streets.

Young adults walk daily on dangerous corridors in the township.

Young adults walk daily on dangerous corridors in the township.

 

Apologies…

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My apologies for not writing agenda preview posts the last 2 meetings. Since breaking my hand…. the more word intensive posts take double the time. That coupled with the amount of correspondence we got before the Hamilton Crossings vote, a ramped up wedding season (my day job) and heading down to Washington for a smart growth conference for a few days left very little time for blogging.

Starting yesterday I’ve been able to start typing with both hands again so expect the previews to start up again the first August BOC meeting.

A reminder: Links to past agenda previews can be found here.
Also I try to tag all my posts so the search function works well. If your ever interested in any particular issue just search for it in the search-bar. Of course you can always email at ronbeitler@gmail.com

 

Smart growth America pairs local leaders with responsible developers

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Spent time in Washington DC attending the Smart Growth America Local Leaders Council Policy summit. The conference paired 60 members of the national bi-partisan council of elected officials with responsible smart growth developers. (LOCUS) Issues such as project development and financing, transit oriented development and revitalization were topics of individual seminars.

For me, after 6 months as a newly elected official what’s been most frustrating is our current crop of local developers. (The usual suspects…) The ones who do most of the mega greenfield projects in the area. There is so much inertia for status quo. Many developers are unwilling to or offer nothing but resistance to building innovative projects. Or worse they package typical cookie cutter sprawl with whatever the current smart growth buzzword is in a misleading fashion. The result is projects sold under somewhat false pretenses. Locally a recent example would be the Allen Organ “dual use zone”. (Words have meanings)

The challenge for us is to attract developers who not only have experience building and marketing successful smart growth projects but more importantly genuinely want to. This is precisely the innovative approach of the Local Leaders Council and LOCUS. If we try to force developers who want to turn cornfields into dollars as quickly as possible regardless of the impact to build better projects we’ll get more mediocrity. We can’t regulate developers into building good projects. Nor should we try.

Instead we must attract the ones who understand the market for these projects, have a tract record of success and genuinely want to be responsible developers. A market for places combining the best of suburbia with the best of new urbanism design have been demonstrated nationwide. Lower Macungie must either compete or fall behind. I want to compete.

To help address this, Smart Growth America has provided an online tool local leaders can use to connect with responsible developers with demonstrated success in delivering mixed-use, multimodal smart growth projects. LOCUS developers are investors and businesspeople whose business model is based on smart growth and are interested in promoting the model nationwide.

Local leaders from around the country gathered in Washington DC to discuss smart growth policy issues. - Photo Smart Growth America

Local leaders from around the country gathered in Washington DC to discuss smart growth policy issues. – Photo Smart Growth America

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Looking forward to Smart Growth America local leaders summit

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Next Sunday-Monday I’ll be attending the Smart Growth America Local Leaders Policy Forum in Washington D.C.

Mayors, Councilmembers, Commissioners, agency directors and other officials from around the country will gather for the Local Leaders Policy Forum in Washington, D.C. “Revitalizing Communities” is the theme. The summit will feature interactive seminars on smart growth implementation; feature speakers who are the innovative leaders spearheading community change; and provide strategic networking opportunities with other top leaders.

I will be blogging and tweeting from the forum.

Seminars I’m looking forward to include:

  • Smart growth leadership: Politics, message branding and case making
  • Bringing back main streets and neighborhood retail (Very relevant to LMT since we are considering a new Neighborhood Commercial zone)
  • Managing revitalization in high growth markets. (Allentown!)
  • Smart growth:  Taking a triple bottom line approach.

Wrapping up TIF

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The TIF for Hamilton Crossings passed tonight 3-2.

Brian Higgins yes
Ryan Conrad yes
Jim Lancsek yes
Ron Beitler no
Doug Brown no

The bottom line is this. The Township will be getting a new and much anticipated shopping center. One that I believe was a certainty with or without the TIF. And that is great news for residents. According to one poll, over 80% of residents support the project but not necessarily the TIF funding.

I shared this basic sentiment as I generally supported the project but had concerns with misusing a funding mechanism designed for distressed communities.

I sincerely believe the township could have and should maintained more revenue resources (100% of revenue instead siphoning off 50% back to the developer). This is revenue I believe we’ll eventually need over the course of the next 20 years to mitigate the giant strip centers inevitable and unpredicted negative impacts. These impacts are normal with rapid development of the type LMT will see over the next 20 years as LVPC predicts our population will continue to boom. These concerns relate primarily to traffic but also other issues as well. For example, this project will make it harder to rely on the state police. The traffic issue is compounded by the fact that the traffic impact fee did not apply to the project. The impact fee is designed to give us the resources to make future improvements. I honestly believe we ended up being the “dumb money at the card table” too quick to give away important resources better served dealing with future impacts.

Every land development of this type and magnitude comes with the good (more shopping options, jobs ect) but also the bad. (traffic, crime ect) The challenge for leaders is to mitigate the bad as much as we can. This is why I believe the decision to forfeit critical and much needed revenue (esp. in light of recent tax increases )was fundamentally shortsighted.

Huge part of smart growth is accounting for financial health over multiple lifecycles. It’s the longview. That means setting up the township to be financially strong over the long term. Its seeking net positive ROI beyond the immediate windfall. Tonight by passing TIF we failed to do that.

So to wrap this issue up we’re getting the new center…. But we were always getting the new center. We’ll just have less resources to insure its negatives don’t eventually outweigh its positives. And the developer will have a slightly more padded profit line. They are clear winners. But the community will have more local shopping options and the jobs that come with them. Like I said, +’s and -‘s. But overall inevitable progress forward.

After the vote I’m mostly disappointed in myself that I wasn’t able to make a more compelling argument to get other Commissioners who voted yes to take a harder look at the big picture.

Learn more about Hamilton Crossings

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To blog or not to blog

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Mike Schlossberg is the State Rep. from the neighboring 132nd district. He writes a blog called “Political Fails: When politics, government and Social Media collide”. As a proponent of politicians using social media, basically he covers the do’s and don’ts. As an elected official who is active on twitter, facebook & my own blog it’s definitely a page on my RSS feed.

This AM he tackled the subject of politicians blogging. Obviously, I blog. And I think its important to do so. I generally agree with his pro’s and con’s. Here are a couple more thoughts…

+’s
 In depth posts +1 – “Twitter and Facebook updates have to be short to get to the point.  There is usually no room for nuance or details in these types of format.” Definitely agree with Mike here. The negatives of T and FB are that often the character limits result in watering down of complicated issues. This leads to posts of a black and white polarizing nature. The main benefit of a blog is it allows me to expand on thoughts. Does this lead to longer posts? Yes. But I think we don’t give voters enough credit for having an attention span to really dig into the nuances of issues. I think my page views and emails they generate reinforce that.

Easy integration +1 – Much of the traffic to my blog is generated from T+FB. If I can pique someones interest with a short post, they then have the option to check out the blog for more. I sort of look at it like this. My blog is a soapbox. Twitter is a megaphone and FB a place to converse. All 3 sort of work in conjunction.

Ill add: I blog so people know what I’m thinking. I think I owe that to the people who vote. But I also blog because it helps me parse out and organize my thoughts on issues. I write a preview of most every BOC meeting. Is it time consuming? Yes. But well worth it. It makes me take the time to be able to write thoughtfully about every issue on an upcoming agenda. In LMT we’re part time Commissioners. My blog + practice of previewing meetings is my prep time. It’s duel purpose.

-‘s

Mikes #1 – Time commitment +1 – “Doing a regular blog entry takes a lot of time, and sometimes it also takes a good chunk of research and editing.” YES. I’m lucky in that owning my business let’s me make my own schedule. This is huge. If it wasnt for this the amount of blogging I do would be tough. I’m also not yet married and have no kids. This is also big. That of course is changing soon. But for now I make the time commitment work since I think its important to do so.

Commenters: “Online commenters are frequently just the worst kinds of people.” – Yes, agreed. Look anywhere and you see it. Anonymous trolls in particular. Mike again is right. Taking the anonymity of comments away is the best way to combat this. I do this by using a comment plug-in that uses FB as a vehicle. The disadvantage is that only ppl with FB accounts can comment. But when weighed with potential for comments to be taken over by trolls its worth it.

End of the day Mikes advice is to blog under two circumstances.
1. Have time to do it. – For now, I do. Once kids are in the picture that may change.
2. Have readership to justify. – I think I do. I average about 125 views with a day good mix of returning and unique. On days I post about hot button topics that number spikes dramatically. All time high is in the 500’s. On slow days it trickles to a couple dozen. Bottom line is no matter how much it helps me think through issues, if no one at all read my blog would I still do it? Doubtful.

I’ll add one more. I just enjoy doing it. I like to blog. I like social media. Its not a burden for me. At my core I’m a policy wonk. I enjoy writing about issues. I enjoy talking to people about issues. Particularly smart growth issues. I expand on that with cross posts on national blogs like smartgrowthforconservatives.com and strongtowns.org. I like writing about and thinking about things I care about therefore blogging is natural fit.

Other local elected officials who blog:
Dr. Ziad Munson EPSD
State Senator Sen John Eichelberger

Broken hand…..

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35 year olds have no business trying to make diving outfield catches in beer league softball. As a result of those shenanigans I now have a broken hand . . . 2 fractured metacarpals. Hand Doc appt. Thurs.

Blogging/social media will continue but with much shorter and more concise posts. (That might be a good thing?!)

Anyone know good dictation software?

Softball Fail

Softball Fail

 

Resulting in this....

Resulting in this….