David Woglom, who runs both Committees, is predicting a turnout of 80-100 people. In an email to TCC members, Wolgrom states:
"I presume that by now you have read one or more of the newspaper articles and seen emails, but we have just become aware that a Pennsylvania law passed in 2009 will permit beginning this year all EIT generated within the Neighborhood Improvement Zone in Allentown to be remitted to a special project fund in Allentown instead of being sent to where each employee in the Zone lives, as is normal with EIT. Right now, there are more questions than there are answers, and I am in the process of gathering as much information as I can for our discussion. Lehigh TCC Solicitor Steve Miller and I have spoken to several Allentown officials (including Mayor Pawlowski) and we are hoping that the City will send a representative to answer questions about the financing of this project and how it will potentially affect the other Lehigh Valley municipalities and school districts."One financial expert tells me this tax grab will be limited to new employees in the NIZ, or to increases in the salaries of tose who are already there. "It will be an accounting nightmare," he adds.
35 comments:
In the timeless words of Ricky Ricardo, "Lucy, you got some splainin' to do.."
Alfonso Todd
www.5minutes2shine.blogspot.com
Bernie
Doing an excellent job.
I am not a crook!!
Nice work on this story. Is there any wonder where tea party and occupy furor arises when schemes like this are foisted on the unsuspecting by crooked politicians doing the bidding of their connected friends? But then lever pullers elect 98% of the bums, anyway. We enable and deserve this.
The problem I always have is with the outrage people have about a possible issue with absolutly no facts to support the level of outrage. It may be a significant tax amount or it might be minor.
The only fact at this point is that there is too little understanding of the state law.
It's also not Allentown's law and it appears they aren't sure of the
details.
And why shouldn't Allentown keep EITs from new employees in the NIZ? They're doing all this to attract more businesses downtown. Under the current system, if this thing actually works, the suburbs would end up getting most of the EIT revenue. How is that fair? Cities who decide to become job centers should keep the EITs their workers produce. Boroughs and townships that are not employment centers and produce little besides housing subdivisions do not deserve to skim that money off the top from more productive places.
Will this also affect Allentown's general fund? Will it lose the EIT from employees in the NIZ? How much is that likely to be?
You are assuming anybody in City Hall knows how the NIZ works.
I wouldn't take that bet.
You know the Mayor isn't going to show up at that meeting. He'd be running into something he hasn't faced in Allentown, a well educated crowd with questions, armed for bear.
I am with Mr. Geeting. This simply is not the suburb's money to begin with; they lay no special claim to it. If anything the suburbs stole the EIT from the city back in the mid-sixties.
Besides, the amount of tax burden this works out to be for the suburbs is minimal at best. Bernie, I remember someone using your own numbers came up with an average tax burden of about $1.50 per person for the Lehigh Valley because of the NIZ. And that is before we all learned this would only apply to new jobs and raises.
Your passions are inflamed way out of proportion to any possible harm. Even if the process by which this legislation was created stinks, it still doesn't cause anyone any real harm--but does promise a real rejuvenation of the downtown. Sometimes life requires pragmatism.
The $ 160 million dollar PALACE of SPORT will never see a penny of this citizen's money.
Unless, of course, Allentown passes a law REQUIRING people to buy ice hockey tickets (you know, sort of like Obamacare mandating everyone buy Health Insurance) at some point in the future.
I wonder how many WAIVERS Chairman Pawlowski will be issuing at that time ...
"The problem I always have is with the outrage people have about a possible issue with absolutly no facts to support the level of outrage. It may be a significant tax amount or it might be minor."
This has nothing to do with the amount and everything to do with the way this has been handled.
"Will this also affect Allentown's general fund? Will it lose the EIT from employees in the NIZ? How much is that likely to be?"
My understanding is that Allentown will also lose the EIT for new employees in the NIZ.
"I am with Mr. Geeting. This simply is not the suburb's money to begin with; they lay no special claim to it. If anything the suburbs stole the EIT from the city back in the mid-sixties."
Um, this also takes money from other cities and small boroughs. They are "urban core" too. It is theft.
"Your passions are inflamed way out of proportion to any possible harm."
There is no passion to this post. It simply reports what is happening and explains how the EIT tax grab will be applied. I see you standing on your head, attempting to justify this pickpocketing, because it's only a quarter instead of a $1.
"Boroughs and townships that are not employment centers and produce little besides housing subdivisions do not deserve to skim that money off the top from more productive places."
Who the hell are you to say who is deserving or not? Small boroughs are struggling to keep Main Street jobs in place, just as the cities are experiencing. This is not about who is more deserving than others. Boroughs and townships do not serve the city. They all exist in a symbiotic relationship that mutually benefits each other.
They can complain all they want... Nothing is changing.
All-time List of Philadelphia Flyers' American Hockey League affiliates :
Quebec City, QUE ... 67/68 to 70/71
Richmond, VA ... 71/72 to 75/76
Springfield, MA ... 76/77
Portland, ME ... 77/78 to 82/83
Springfield, MA ... 83/84
Hershey, PA ... 84/85 to 95/96
Philadelphia, PA ... 96/97 to 08/09
Adirondack, NY ... 09/10 to present
Source : http://www.hockeydb.com
or about 1,000 other places, actually
Seven DIFFERENT cities already, like I said. Who is the next Anon Cheerleader Hero to tell me how stupid I am?
Why are you wasting time on this, it will not change its a DONE DEAL, where were these people when it was voted on? Kind of reminds me of NAFTA CAFTA and everything else people complain about
GET OFF YOUR laze arsses and start to vote 10% turnout is pitiful and I wonder how many of these people who are complaining even voted in the last 10 years.
You are correct, Anonymous 3:04 --- the Palace of Sport IS a done deal.
However ...
He/she who cannot learn from history is condemned to repeat it.
By transcribing the travesty that is unfolding in the People's Democratic City With No Limits, perhaps some other, more fortunate, city can avoid spending $ 160.0 million dollars so that a only a well-connected few like HEATHER BROWNE, JEFF VAUGHAN and J.B. REILLY might profit greatly.
With that in mind, I would definitely dispute the "waste of time" remark.
anon 3:04, it was never voted on. there was never an opportunity, what so ever, for input until city council rubber stamped on eminent domain. the informational meetings conducted by the city recently were after all was said and done.
Used to go to Yocco's on Liberty St. since the 60s when my dad would take me there. Still enjoy the wretched things, but never in downtown. Haven't been to 600 block of Liberty St. in years and wouldn't dream of going there today. Good luck with the arena scheme. Nobody who is sane wants to go to downtown Allentown after dark.
I am sane. I work downtown and don't mind being there after dark.
Perhaps I am not sane because I often stay downtown deep into the midnight hours blogging about (waste of time?) sports at Headquarters East.
Sometimes, I get nervous when it comes time to physically leave The Fortress.
I am embarrassed to admit that publically because I have always fancied myself as someone who can and will take care of one's self.
However, it IS getting rougher and rougher out there all the time and there just ain't no denying that.
Just ask the unfortunate night club bouncer who was just recently shot.
(Headquarters is not so far at all from TU CASA, for anyone who wants to lay in wait and take a shot at me)
"I am with Mr. Geeting. This simply is not the suburb's money to begin with; they lay no special claim to it. If anything the suburbs stole the EIT from the city back in the mid-sixties."
JACKPOT!! Someone finally gets it. That is exactly what happened.
Actually, it's the taxpayers' money.
Government produces no wealth on its own.
Every last penny the Government has was confiscated from one of its very own Citizens, who produced it as a result of blood, sweat and tears first.
The Right to Govern comes from the Consent of the Citizenry.
Foreign concepts to some on this board, clearly.
"Government produces no wealth on its own."
Although I completely disagree with this statement, this is not the question in contention. The question is who has a right to the tax once it has been collected--the work municipality or the home municipality. Jon Geeting
http://www.jongeeting.net/?p=4651
and I
http://southwhitehall.patch.com/blog_posts/suburbs-owe-a-debt-to-allentown
have given strong philosophical, moral, and historical arguments for why the work municipality is entitled to the EIT and how the NIZ simply restores the tax situation that was in place before 1965.
Pontificating about the terror of taxes is not enough. The sustained argument that has to be made is why the residential municipalities are actually entitled to the EIT instead of the work municipality. That is what is centrally at issue. Until you attack that question, you're just skirting around the bushes with rhetoric.
Progressive Liberal links don't do much to lend weight to the actual truth in any matter.
CONGRESSMAN WILLIAM FINDLEY
They have the right to it because the people who EARN it live there and the tax money is used for their community.
And before you start on the whole "hicks in the suburbs are selfish" thing, they are already paying a nice share of state and county taxes the majority of which are spent in the cities.
And why can't you see that it's upsetting for money to be taken out of local municipalities to go to Allentown after years of fiscal mismanagement?
John,
The response to the loss of revenue by the commercial municipality was in Act 511, creating the occupational privilege tax, now changed to the local services tax. Of course they set it at a flat $10 a year, leading to the controversy of a few years back when the law was rewritten and most municipalities raised the tax to $52 per worker per year.
But that history aside, the theory is sound - a worker who drives to an office or factory and then stays there all day uses some, but not much, of that municipalities' services.
By contrast, the worker's home municipality must provide police, fire and other services to their property 24 hours a day. And it costs as much to plow a street where 10,000 people work as it does one where 50 people live.
A city like Allentown, which in 1965 was rife with employers, benefited from the property tax paid by the commercial enterprises, as well as the general economic development of supporting businesses.
In fact cities received a modest kickback from suburban flight at the outset. They still had most of the major employers paying the bulk of the taxes, and as people moved out to the suburbs many converted and rented out their properties - so the city collected property taxes AND per capita taxes from renters.
The problem is they made no consideration for quality of life. More renters meant more cars parked on streets that had been designed for horse and buggy. A more transient population, by definition lower income, meant more crime and other social problems that would cost the city more in services. And it only sped up the suburban flight. The downward spiral began.
The only thing to do, or so the political class thought, was raise property taxes. That helped drive more residents AND businesses to the suburbs. Now services were costing more and more and tax revenues were falling.
Allentown has been almost a textbook example of how NOT to run a city for five decades. That is NOT the fault of the surrounding municipalities.
Geeting saw his shadow today, now back to his den. I cannot belive you would talks so foul about your neighbors. Ya know the ones who pay their tax to feed your endless stream of grants.
I bet there are more people working in our three largest Townships then in the City of Allentown.
If you hate the Township and Boroughs folks so much, maybe we should stay away.
Lets not forget the Cement Belt Built American and good ole Harry Trexler made some of his dough reaping the mineral resources from those bad suburbs. You can see the iconic holes in the ground today.
I am proud of Allentown and the rich heritage of all corners of the LV. Your entitlement attitude is beginning to wear.
Tonight's vintage photo featuring Lehigh Valley Xtreme head coach DAVE "the Hammer" SCHULTZ doing his thing as a Philadelphia Flyers farmhand for the Richmond Robins pays homage to a master of whoop-ass photography, himself, Herr O'Hare.
"CHAIRMAN PAWLOWSKI's ICE HOCKEY HISTORY FOR DUMMMIES : PHILADELPHIA FLYERS' AHL CLUBS"
www.goironpigs.com
Some parts of Whitehall, Palmer, Wilson, Bethlehem Township, Catasauqua, and other boroughs and townships are just as much part of the "urban core" of the Lehigh Valley as the cities.
"WITH STATE $ 500 MILLION IN THE RED, IS MORE BELT-TIGHTENING AHEAD?"
John L. Micek, The Morning Call
... Funny how building Chairman Pawlowski's magnificent $ 160.0 million PALACE of SPORT is somehow okay with What-Am-I-Gettings-From-Big-Government, Future Downtown Arena Attendee and that whole crwod but, yet, all the Progressive Liberal Dummycrat fruitcakes in the Lame Stream Media are currently working so hard to make GOVERNOR CORBETT look like some kind of a asshole.
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