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I can think of a ton of a lot of great uses for this $549,112 windfall in Lehigh and Northampton Counties but the one most in line with the intent of the natural gas impact fee law is probably to buy up the development rights to farmland and open space areas that developers might want to turn into exurban single-family homes and strip malls.
The next best use would be funding the Bi-County Health Department.
June 18, 2013 By Jon Geeting Leave a Comment
TPM: In an interview with The New Republic, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris admitted that Silver wasn’t one of his lifelines in the 2012 campaign [...] “I admire how he has built a franchise,” Harris said. “I roll my eyes at how he gets up on his high horse quite a lot on different topics.” Jim [...]
June 9, 2013 By Jon Geeting 2 Comments
Alex Trujillo sounds like a real mensch, and on that level it’s sad to see that his 55-year old business Supermercado Mi Tierra closing up shop. This is ultimately a good thing for the neighborhood though, because C-Town is going to be a decent step up in terms of product selection, and they’re going to [...]
June 17, 2013 By Jon Geeting Leave a Comment
Tom Hartley continues to impress at the Bethlehem Parking Authority. I’m not a big fan of the multi-space meters either because there’s nothing worse than having to stand in line to pay for parking. But BPA’s data does show usage of the Main Street Commons parking deck increased last year, so the multi-space meters haven’t [...]
May 13, 2013 By Jon Geeting Leave a Comment
The point of political blogging is not that you’ll directly reach so many voters that you’ll shape opinions about elections. The point is that for every couple dozen low-information voters, there’s a *political friend* who people ask who to vote for the week before an election. The point of blogging is to shape the opinions [...]
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The first aspect the fee is designed to cover is any impact gas drilling is having – roads, bridges, environmental, etc. The smart move here is to use it for that, and escrow any excess for future environmental impacts.
The worst move is to fund the health department. Then you have more ongoing costs to cover, your infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and you have no reserves for future environmental impacts.
That doesn’t strike me as a lot of money for land.