##VIDEO ID:ZAiQCDmm9Mg## we are rep everybody good evening everyone we're get started tonight I ask that we all rise for the pled to the flag pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone uh Mr Miller call the rooll Mr Callahan present Miss Grancy Smith present M qu present Miss lard present Miss Leon Wilhelm present Mr CL present I will note mayor Reynolds will be joining us later as he had an EV a meeting with local Boy Scout Troop as well as there was an event today for the America 250 celebration so he is expected to join us a little later into tonight's meeting we have two citations tonight for two recent retirees from our city Fire Department firefighter Timothy hefin and fire Lieutenant Larry Copan I don't believe either were here we will make sure that they both get their citations from city council wishing them well in their retirement and thanking them for their years of service moving on to the approval of the minutes from the November 6 2024 council meeting meeting any discussion on the minutes from our last council meeting seeing none the minutes will stand as approved moving on to our public comment as is custom we'll start with anything not being voted on this evening I do ask everyone to respect our five minute time limit and we have two people signed up tonight just for anyone following Along on YouTube you can fast forward ahead if you want to watch the meeting in real time so our first person signed up tonight is Christine rotho I live at 2213 Florence Avenue here in Bethlehem um you know change is good uh I I understand change is inevitable however when that involves housing in our city I want to caution you and every Department that has to sign off on plans to think about the current circumstances and resources and future also think about what if something doesn't go right what if that plan on paper doesn't go right tonight I want to specifically talk about the Central Park West duplex development in the 13th Ward it's Grand View Boulevard and Florence Avenue area as part of that approval process back in the early 2000s there was a provision made for the detention pond the detention Pond was put in for the storm water runoff from Central Park Avenue right so somebody has to take care of that detention pond that's on the property of 2215 Florence Avenue my neighbor it was agreed upon that whoever owned that house would maintain that detention pond maintenance means cutting the grasses down several times a growing season maintaining the fencing maintaining the shrubbery around it how often has that happened over all these years I could probably count them on one hand I have called multiple times over the years now now I needed to say something because I had I've been thrown from originally the health department oh no that went to storm waterer Department then it was sent to engineering then I got sent recently to community and economic development onto housing inspections and codes sometimes I'm speaking to somebody and they're listening to me and they're taking my information I say please somebody give me a call and tell me what's up with this detention Pond is the homeowner going to have to be responsible for it and I'm not getting any answers I I I'd like to get an answer if the city doesn't have the resources to handle coming out and looking at these things because this thing's in the back you don't see it when you're whizzing by on Florence Avenue or Grand View Boulevard it's in my backyard so I just add you know I've been a resident for over 38 years here in Bethlehem I'm paying my taxes am I not worthy of an answer to this are you know are we not worthy of having somebody maintain that horrible detention pond in our backyard that was agreed upon by the city so I just I just caution you I ask you for an answer whenever anything is being approved please ask yourself do we have the resources to handle anything that might come up thank you thank you m Roth doy and I appreciate you coming out I don't see Mr alcohol here this evening or director of Public Works but if you want to you're welcome to stay till the end of the meeting or if it gets too late if you'll mind sharing your contact information with Mr Miller our city clerk or our contact information is on the website and U Mr Miller I could try to follow with you about about that okay our next speaker this evening Mr Mark will Weber uh Mark Weber 66 West Elizabeth Avenue uh also representing our uh the drip our Watchdog on Water and Sewer uh now up to 350 something members so we're getting bigger but uh I haven't been here in a long time I feel bad about that but uh I was in Alaska and Canada over the summer I turned my water off and know what you're thinking I had it off uh I didn't have that option when I went to New Zealand about a year ago because it was winter time anyhow um I think I first came here about a year ago and I wanted to acknowledge uh what that feels like um and then I'm thinking back and it's not just about water but I was thinking about a general feeling what it's like in the city here compared I've been here almost 50 years uh and as I look back on a year ago as I rewinded I I my my feeling is it was a lot of discontent in the city not just with water uh the issues that I personally had but in general uh a winner of our discontent I think that's Shakespeare I think that's Richard III the first opening lines of Richard I third don't don't uh don't hold me to that but um I think uh and I thought you know why is there this discontent in the city or was there a year ago was uh just not only the water situation it was the garage it was the the housing thing out of the Presbyterian Church there was a lot of discontent I think and uh it seemed unusual to me having lived here for so long but you know I wasn't at involved so maybe maybe there was always that undercurrent and discontent and I just didn't feel it and I thought you know why is that in the city and I thought about it for a long time and I think one of the one of the problems with it is the the people that what I would call the political Elite in this city we tend to think of the political Elite as uh you know a national federal level or even the state level but even at the city level we have political Elite and uh I think they have a very disproportionate amount of power you know when you have department heads that are making six figures that are deciding what the costs of uh sewer rates are going to be that kind of thing uh I think that inevitably grades discontent um does for me um why anybody needs to make six figure salary to distribute uh something that we all need to exist water is beyond me I don't know how that got to that um parking authority another thing people stop me all the time why don't you do something about the parking authority I'm like whoa uh I can hardly uh deal with the one situation I was looking at um but again I think six figure salary and uh meanwhile you get parking meters that go from uh 10 minutes for a quarter to six minutes for a quarter you know just greed and more greed greed and power you know so and it's a heavy feeling it's not just about the money but you feel really depressed when you look at that that you feel it feel the heaviness of it I do um you know and again if you're if you're making that that kind of sixf figure salary uh and you and you sit there and you want to kick the rates up whether it's sewer or whether it's parking um it's no big deal you're not you're not going to suffer that but um I think I I read on the uh National Organization of Aging or something they said that 23% of seniors are trying to exist solely on their social security and a lot of them between 10,000 and 19,000 so you know what a $22 quarterly kick up of your water and sewer rate it's no big deal if you're making six figures but if you're trying to exist on uh say you're a widower and you have just one social security check how are you going to get by uh if you're making you know $1600 a month and something even a $100 raise in your sewer and water rates can really really hurt Council think about the little guy don't always rubber stamp the political Elite even at the city level thank you thank you sir that exhausts our list of who signed up in advance I do want to recognize I know they popped in only for a second but that was our local Troop 82008 that are visiting City Hall tonight and popped in to see the city council meeting for a couple minutes the so going through so ex our list of who had signed up Scouts will make their comments another night I turn to the wide Center I'll start in the front and work from front to back left to right Mary mol 449 Grand View Boulevard about a month ago while I was out walking my dog I noticed two large used tires that had been dumped along the west side of Grand View Boulevard between West Broad and Ritter streets last week I called the city to report them the dispatcher said she would pass it along while the tires are still there thankfully it is not hot sweltering heat with massive rainstorms or my mosquitoes might be an issue since residents hire their own haulers mine would charge me extra I am wondering if the city can come and pick them up and properly dispose of them maybe if there were cameras or more police presence illegal dumping would not occur second I believe the time to utilize any remaining funds of the American Rescue plan is running out can These funds be allocated to locating and replacing lead pipes throughout the city and alleviating the possible burden on taxpayers the notice I received said to run cold water daily for several minutes to flush lines this will raise water bills for residents especially those on fixed incomes could the city utilize these funds to purchase test kits for the residents by providing test kits it might better pinpoint locations where for the city to concentrate on residents are responsible for the lines from the curb to the home but the meter is the property of the city I think that should be I think that the city should be responsible for up to and including the meter federal government banned usage of Le lead pipes and Lead solder in 1986 researching and concentrating on homes built prior to 1986 could further reduce the search area are water lines in the streets LED or are those supplying our homes or only those supplying our the homes of residents the notice I received stated that my lines may or may not be led or galvanized piping I wonder if someone knows if they can be a combination of both last week there was a company called a M marking White Lines along Florence Avenue and West Broad Street I questioned the person while out walking he said Lehi County hired his company to Mark storm drain and water lines Water and Sewer lines are either blue or green I have no idea what white signifies I questioned the county and was told to contact Bethlehem I spoke to several people from Bethlehem Department ended up with a started with the street department and ended up with the engineering department I was to told to follow up with planning I may be retired but that does not mean that I have nothing else on my plate to do also filing a right to know request would have been futile as I did not think I had enough information to proceed with one the person from AECOM was quite surprised at how knowledgeable I was regarding drainage issues in the area I am many many other residents believe there is a gross either a gross lack of Competency or communication between departments to provide concise answers to resident concerns I for one think that it has too much to do with red tape or too many hands in the cookie jar trying to get a direct and concise answer to my questions is a lesson inutility and as such many times I give up nice to know where my tax dollars are spent thank you m mol those your favor hello Harry Faber sorry for missing last week uh or last council meeting I was in my final stages of preparation for the lset which I think I aced but uh I also kind of missed the talk around the election so I kind of prepared some thoughts about it and today specifically I want to talk about something I'm deeply worried about and that is fascism it's very easy and convenient for us to believe that fascism was an exception that it was just a mass delusion created by a few Psychopaths but the reality is much worse for our system fascism is not a bug that can be worked out it's a feature and let me explain let's say hypothetically uh you were ruled by a party whose only real priority was enriching the 1% at the expense of everyone else and let's say hypothetically that this ruling class suppressed Progressive movements at home and engaged in brutal violence abroad to maintain the flow of cheap labor and raw materials for their backers all while claiming to be the party of decency let's say hypothetically that because such a party could not promise to meaningfully improve people's lives they were limited to running on a platform of preserving the state status quo in a time when their institutions had already lost public trust and that the hypocrisy of the elites was on full display let's say hypothetically the people are angry they know they are being lied to and they vote for a sledgehammer because this hypothetical party could not acknowledge the crisis and because it would crush any alternatives they'd know they were Paving the way for or because it would crush any alternatives they know they were Paving the way for right-wing populism but they'd risk it every single time why because to them it would be preferable to anything that challenged the almighty dollar if we label fascism as a historical glitch and put it away on the Shelf then we don't have to Grapple with a reality that drives millions of people to right-wing populism fascism was not a historical anomaly fascism is just capitalism in Decline from the perspective of the capitalist Elites fascism is a perfectly reasonable tool to deploy when democracy becomes inconvenient what does this mean it means that as long as there's capitalism there will always be fascism lurking underneath it and as long as we allow ourselves to be ruled by feckless liberals who refuse to challenge capitalism rightwing populism will continue to have a dangerous appeal that those liberals will not be equipped to stand up to so why does this matter it matters because once we understand where fascism comes from we understand how to fight it we need to come together and we need to organize we need to be there for one another in our times of need we need to stop the misuse of our finite resources that are being spent on destruction mass destruction opposed to Innovation we need to come together thank you than also this book uh my favorite Professor the mayor's favorite professor farbod gave me this book the other day Declarations of Independence cross-examining American ideology by Howard Zin I can't put it down it's great I recommend it thank Mr sh M Shire uh 1898 in Avenue I always like to go last because then I can comment on some of the other comments so I'll start by recommending a book U it's called on tyranny by Timothy Snider a very short book and a small size too only 120 pages but he's a political science professor at Harvard and yeah describes 20 ways in which democracies can slide into tyy so top top of the uh top of the news so to speak uh council member Leon has graciously agreed that I'll make the announcement about Southside Library hours uh you might have read in the Bethlehem press that the hours have been cut to uh Monday through Thursday from 10 to two that was only 16 hours a week uh I called to check up on this and was told that since then they have hired an additional person so it's still only Monday through Thursday but it's now 10 to 6 and so in effect a doubling of the number of hours on Social Security um I did an interesting little calculation my income taxes are going up every year and the prime reason is that social security for 2023 was 8.7% higher because of the inflation that occurred in 2022 and the standard deduction also went up but not as much only 6.7% so that's you know one agency the Social Security Administration does one thing and the Internal Revenue Service does something else and the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing apparently so my taxes went up 50% um on U there was something else that was said uh about um what was it now well okay well that that'll do it thank you thank you Mr sh was there anyone else in the wide Center who want to make comment on anything we're not voting on this evening anyone to the right thank you everyone that concludes our first public comment so now we're going to move on to our second public comment this is for any ordinance or resolution that we're voting on this evening we did have one person sign up in advance Miss Deborah sarakis thank you so much thank you my name is Deborah sarakis I'm a lifelong resident of Bethlehem and a member current member of the Bethlehem Fine Arts commission and I wanted to take a bit of your time and to thank mayor Reynolds for um a preliminary approval of my um nomination for a second term on the betham Fine Arts commission also that a second term for Richard beby and a first year nomination for Khloe Cole Wilson as a new member of the commission I know that all the members of that commission really appreciate the support of the mayor and the council not only for our work but also for the work of arts and cultural organizations throughout the city personally I think the proliferation and the work of those organizations helped to make Bethlehem the wonderful place it is to live uh this is I'm sorry I'm kind of hijacking this is unrelated to um uh the the nominations uh since I have the microphone I wanted to offer my personal gratitude to the Bethlehem recycling Bureau especially in this season I really appreciate the compost and recycling centers they are convenient they well-run facilities the bureau and the helpful and very friendly staff at the centers enable us all to be better stewards of our individual properties and of our Collective environment and not just because it's the season for giving thanks but also because it's particularly perplexing time I want to thank all of you for your hard work and your leadership thanks thank you Miss sarakis so that concludes our list for anything being voted on tonight again I'll go around the room I turn to the wide Center Mr favor hello uh I just wanted to ask a few things about the um vehicle auction I saw that some of the vehicles on there were from relatively new I mean from 2015 2016 I was wondering if um they were being sold in order to purchase new vehicles if there was anything wrong with these vehicles why we needed to sell them um I just think again if we have it it's just again it's an endless cycle of like consumption it's waste you know we're spending resources to on we're selling our our our already established like resources that we have in order to buy newer ones if that's the case like I don't know it's just again endless cycle of consumption it's wasteful when it comes to the finite resources we have in the ground against it so yeah that's all also be a little revolutionary I haven't said it in a while thank you Mr fa again I focus on the wide Center anyone who wants to make comment on anything we're voting on this evening Mr Baron I take you you do hi Frank Baron 36 West Spruce Street in Bethlehem I have a comment U more so than a question the ordinances that are to be scheduled to be uh voted on today um seemed to be a bit sketchy um for example the um the budget on the uh tax rate doesn't say what last year's rate was the current rate doesn't say what the previous rate was so there's no way of knowing really from this page from taken directly from the uh the um website are we're getting better or we're getting worse as far as taxes go um I do pay I am a real estate property owner and I do pay taxes uh here's a second uh question and this second issue this goes along with a number of uh programs and ordinance cons uh uh dealing with uh number of different programs it has the uh proposed ordinance doesn't have the this year's ordinance it doesn't have the previous year's ordinance so how are we to compare whether whether these line items are increasing or decreasing um there are no spreadsheets there is just a simple one line stating what the new ordinance in in 2015 will be I think that's a disadvantage to the citizens and taxpayers of Bethlehem I think they owe it to city council to explain fully in one page what is happening with their taxes and their expenses so thank you very much thank you Mr Baron is there anyone else in the wide Center who wanted to make comment on anything being voted on this evening everybody to the right that concludes our second public comment we're going to move on to Old business any old business from members of council moving on to new business any new business for members of council I'll start with councilman cramsey Smith and then Mr Callahan okay thank you um I just wanted to ask Mr Bol if he could address the letter that went out to Residents about water because I think um a lot of people were concerned confused i' just like to for you if you can clarify it and let us know what the situation is right now with the water sure can you hear me does it work okay so this is all re regarding the lead service issue so the EPA updated the lead and copper rule recently one of the things they required of all utilities was was to send letters out to all of our customers so all 37,000 customers got a letter which the purpose of which was to give them information as to what we know of the status of their service line as of today and to be perfectly honest what we know today is not very much because a lot of those letters went out saying they were unknown like lead service unknown because a lot of the lead Services a lot of service lines lead services and otherwise were installed in 1920 to 1940 time frame and we have absolutely no record of what was installed where so this is really just the start of the process and when I say the EPA published the new leting copper rule we were mandated mandated to identify or present an inventory of our service lines that we know of today to give people information on what we do know and what we don't know we have now we're on the clock we have three years till November 27 2027 to update that service line inventory and to the extent possible identify all services in our service territory so find out to the extent that we can what the material is for everybody's service line and then by 20 and then so then by that time we'll have an idea of how much lead is in the ground in theory and then we'll have 10 years from that time so 2037 to come up with a plan to replace all the lead so that's the time frame we're looking at um it's important to for everybody to know that the lead levels in the in the city drinking water system are very low we add we've been adding a corrosion inhibitor in our water for at least 30 years we test lead levels consistently for the past 30 years plus since the lead and copper Ru came out back in the late 80s the the Federal action limit on lead the max limit is 15 parts per billion we consistently measure below one parts per billion um so there's feel confident that there is like there is our water is safe to drink with respect to lead um now we still have lead in the ground so that that was the point part of the point point of getting the Letters Out to let to inform people let them know what we know and what we don't know about the lead in our system and that we have now an obligation to identify those services and then remove that lead when we find it so we there's a there's a map on our website people can go I think it was it was identified in the letter there's a link in the website people can go find their property and we'll tell them what we know and what we don't know about their service line there's a link to a form people can I can go to their into their basement and help us with filling out the database and they can help self-identify the pipe material that is entering their home so that's one piece of data that will help us of course there's two parts of the service line there's the private side which the homeowner owns from the curb to the house and then there's a public side from the curb to the main in the street often times those are two different materials that's just the way things were installed over the past 100 years um but now we have an obligation to find out exactly what's in the ground and then remove those that are LED so thank you we were doing this anyway right before this mandate from EPA yeah so we so today we have re identified and removed about 500 lead Services we've been doing this um we know there's more be perfectly honest we don't know how much more because like I said a lot of it is unknown um a lot of the effort we're going to take now in the next three years is obviously GNA H we're GNA have to hire some professional help a lot of utilities are in the same boat you I'm sure you saw the article about Allentown they have 30,000 unknown knows we have many thousand unknowns East is in the same boat a lot of cities of our C of our age and our size are in the same boat basically um so we're all going to be in the in the same position now of trying to identify you know those what we have left in the ground and then try and remove those lead services and I know this is difficult but you said by 30 37 they have to all be replaced you anticipate 203 2037 I'm sorry years yeah um do you anticipate that happening even before hopefully I mean what are your thoughts on the deadline honestly I couldn't say right now we're gonna have to get a better handle on what we have in ground because like because what the EPA wants you to do is if you ident identify x amount then they want you to replace 10% a year over 10 years because they understand it's going to be a funding is going to be a challenge um you know there's there's only so much money in the pot in terms of federal funding State funding you know rates may be affected self- financing and so forth so so for example if we had a thousand service lines that we identified were led the EPA expects you to replace 100 a year over 10 years that way it it it provides a little bit of uh predictability and planning and F and to be able to finance that right over over a period of time so you not so you're not going out and borrowing millions of dollars all at once to try and do a thousand Services you're going to try and do it a little bit at a time because like I said while it's important people need to be assured that because these Services have been in the ground for decades the lead levels in the water are still very very low way below federal guidelines so the health risk is very very minimal you know to our customers so the bottom line is water is safe to drink correct okay thank you very much did you have anything else Council I could come back yeah we'll open it up for the question about water to other members of council start with Mr C here my my my question was the uh the same exact question but um so it's it's the service lines only or is it the mains also the water mains no no Mains are made of lead so the only the only thing that's affected is the line that goes from the main into the house correct and that's a thin that's not a big it's a very thin water line correct it's 58 half inch one inch at most so what can the residents do again to uh help find if is there a way they can find out what it is without digging up the ground there's they can they can look in their basement so the easiest the first part the easiest part and we've got we presented some instructions on the website they can go in their basement they can try and find the pipe that comes through the wall before their water meter and it's either going to be copper or lead or galvanized or some other kind type of Steel more more than likely we give them some instructions on how to identify which material and then they they can either call us send there's an email link um there's a form that can be filled out so that they can send us that information so that's that's one piece of dat that's one data point that at least tells what's on their side the side service line is made of we still have to do our homework on the city Side from the from the main to the sidewalk correct right so um I I I don't know if you have this information or not what would it what would the cost of of if if if it if it was uh on the city's part or on the residents part what do you think of the cost of changing that leadline to um a copper line or what most of them are copper now right right so we do have we have experience with this because we do replace service lines and like you said we had that program a couple years ago where we replace 400 Services i' say on average it's roughly $10,000 per residence that's from the curb I'm sorry that's from the main to the house roughly that's that's and it could be different it could be higher could be lower dep depending on how long it is what what what obstructions might be in the way relative to sidewalks concrete so landcaping etc etc so you said from the main to the house but the city's responsible from the main to the side the other side of the of the the sidewalk right so would the city be responsible for that it's it's yet to be determined and that will de depend on the funding source in large part I think the ultimately what even though the Regulators are not requiring it that the city fund 100% from the both the public and private side I think they're encouraging that to try to alleviate the cost to the homeowner because let let's just say theoretically if it's $10,000 to do the whole thing it would be 5,000 for the city 5,000 for the customer that's very round numbers right I think ultimately the goal is to try and put the financial burden on the city for the whole thing meaning that if the city's going to go for example to go to pvest to get loans or grants pennvest is going to want us to do the entire Ser service in EPA and pennvest they're not just don't to want us to do half of it they want you to do the whole thing so that funding is going to be tied to that ability to do the whole thing and that will alleviate the financial burden on the the property yeah that's that's the that's the ultimate goal of what it's going to look like good and and and if you could just reiterate because I I didn't hear you on the parts it's parts so the the EPA uh right now allows how many parts per billion 15 parts per billion is the max is safe level well that's the maximum contaminant level they call it of lead and we are one part less than one good on average yes and where is that testing being done is that being tested is that water being tested at the entry level of the at in the dams or at the out at the outlet in in the home in the home because you have to remember you got you got to test Downstream of where the lead is so the only lead in our system is in the service line to your to individual homes so the only place to get the sample is in the house so we have to get we work with customers all the time we use the we give them instructions on how to pull the sample there's Specific Instructions on when they can do it what time a day because you have to get it um um first thing in the morning they call it the first draw goes the water's been sitting in the line right for say eight hours overnight so you want to get that first draw when somebody opens up a faucet that would be in theory if there's any lead in the water that would be the best time to catch it so there's there's certain procedures that you follow for for grabbing a lead sample and we work with customers to pull those samples because we have to get it from inside the house and and my last question is when at what uh time frame year-wise did did the city or uh contractors stop using lead so if a home was built after a certain date there's no chance of having the actual the the the date was in 1991 which doesn't seem like that far that long ago um that was that was when Pennsylvania outlawed Leed Plumbing 1991 so there was no more lead so you can we can say for sure that if a house was built after 91 it's good it's probably has no LED service everything before 91 we know we know just intuitively that we weren't using lead in the 1950s 60s 7s 80s right but the problem is we can't prove it we have to be able to prove it that there's no lead in the ground um and unfortunately there's no records of the material so we got to do a little bit of digging thank you sure anything else for we have Mr B councilwoman quch thank you um and thank you Miss KY Smith for letting us have this conversation during uh your your business time um I just wondered um so the 400 that you did do you funded 100% from the from the main to the to the home those were those were covered by the grant was was it a lead and healthy homes Grant what no pvest pvest right yes okay um I I thought that they had been but I wanted to be sure and then my other question about this was um so you have several years to identify them and then a 10-year period where you will um you know um remediate 10% a year during that 10-year period once you've identified the houses uh will you um plan to offer you know uh regular testing other other things for the homeowners who you've identified because now they know they have lead lines and but they're in line and they don't know when they're going to get them yes we all yes testing we offer yes that's free um especially for people who who we know have fled Services right um so yes test testing we we do Aller that yes thanks and I think that um one of the concerns that everybody has uh is because of Flint you know once we heard about Flint obviously I think it's it's really seared into the consciousness of people um about the the danger in our water but I think that you've been talking about the anti-corrosive material you know chemical that you put in and that was specifically what happened in Flint was that the the the government de decided they were going to save money by taking that chemical out of their uh process which led to corrosion in the pipes which led to the lead ending up in the homes is that correct they a little more complicated than that they changeed water source so every I think they they change it from a river to a lake the lake to the river but they still didn't put the an water chemistry they thought they didn't they didn't need it the cor anti-corrosion uh inhibitor with this new water source so they stopped it and then that's what turned out they did need it they did need it yeah okay thank you and I appreciate the fact that you've been doing that for over 30 years so thank you well not you necessarily but yeah anything else from Mr Bola councilwoman L yeah uh thank you for addressing this um I also received a bunch of questions and comments like what is this letter um so questions that I still have are um what is or is there yet a project plan for how you will I do the inventory Beyond people can help by checking their basement service lines like what is your plan for over the uh next three years to update that inventory that's something we're going to be working on in 25 we don't have anything right now but we're gonna um there there's a lot of different elements to it um a lot of it is going to be um paper chase to see how much documentation there really is out there you have to remember we serve all our parts of 12 municipalities so there may be like development records from the different municipalities when those developments were installed when the houses were built that can help narrow down when the service lines were put in so that's one that's one kind of angle another angle is to do test digs another angle is to do um what they call predictive there predictive modeling or analytics which The Regulators are accepting there's companies out there that do that um so there's a lot of different things we're going to be looking at to try and help us over the period of next three years okay um when you look at the public side the main to the sidewalk I guess you might have just answered this um is there do you have to dig to test everyone can you do like a drill sample like how how invasive is that they call a pot pot hole pot digging there's machines that where you can just kind of almost cord drill down and expose the pipe and then you can that that's that's what we did when they did the the pen vest job so they just went down cord drill a hole right at the service right at theuh Curb stop so then you expose both sides of the of the curb stop and you say okay here's the city Side here's the private side the city side is is lead the private side is copper so we know we can just replace the lead not the copper so that that is a procedure that can be used so for the inventory building it wouldn't be every Road basically has to get torn up it's small correct and it gets back to this analytical exercise where if you can show that houses along a a block or neighborhood were all installed at the same time right by the same developer and you can do some random sampling pod hauling and say okay I got no lead here so they they can throw some analysis out and say well if there's no lead in these few samples all these houses were built at the same time we have a high the samp the the lead levels are low but we have a high confidence there's no lead here so they would accept that as a a reasonable argument to say there's no lead conversely if you're doing the same thing and you're finding pockets of lead then you can then you have to make the assumption that that there is a lot of lead here with that in that particular neighborhood uh so that that's one way to approach it understood um has there been any conversation already about um you you you mentioned a lot of municipalities are covered are affected by this uh rule change um has there been any conversation about like the Tri City Coalition and that was formed a couple years ago and maybe teaming resources to uh address a study of this scale uh no but that's something we can look into not at this time um all right and then um you know this letter and process are as a result of a a change in regulation we know that happens periodically time to time and different administrations have different priorities you were already doing some of this before the EPA made this current rule change would the intent be to continue the building of the database and mediation of lead even if the EPA regulations change again to not require it again that's a good question we you know regulations do not change very quickly I would say probably we would continue with the same program because honestly I don't see it changing there there's there's rules in EPA d P that what they call Pre that prevent back they call backsliding it's a term used in the regulatory environment where once you create a new regulation the rule say you can't go back and undo or make the make the limits less stringent it's called backsliding there's anti-b backsliding uh provisions and a lot of regulations I don't see us going back honestly don't okay it's good to know um and my last question is you know we're facing the uh effects of lack of recordkeeping from decades and decades ago um as this database is built and other records and samples are are Conn are collected um is there a concerted effort to Archive um as much information as possible for somebody who will be standing here 30 years from now saying the rules changed and we need all this information yes so we're keep yes so we're updating all our like a GIS platform uh we have a master database for all the service everybody's service there's a map that's available now so all of this information now is going to be loaded on the modern technology if you will that wasn't there 100 years ago so yes all right with back up and back up and back up I hope all this information yes okay thank you councilwoman Leo I if I were just going down the line we've stolen all the good questions um I'm going to keep building off of uh councilwoman L's questions um so 1940 the water department comes along is that when we start keeping somewhere along 1940 the water department comes along is that when we start keeping records for like what materials in the ground like when did record keeping actually start like uh we have records of we have records of uh addresses dates line size who installed it all the way back to 1910 okay we what we don't have is material it was just never thought of being a piece of information thought at the time was important cool um the 15 material and that that carried through up until when I say recently maybe the 80s or so bet you hate them um 15 parts per billion have we ever had anybody that's tested even close to that that that you've worked with where you say you're working with the customers have we had anybody test even close to that honestly I don't know but I don't think so PA F I don't I don't think so and and this might be a Laura question more than a you question or director colins question more than a you question but it was my understanding when we first came on board and we were looking at by we I mean the this current Council we were looking at lead in the city it was my understanding that most of our lead cases came from like high elevated lead in the blood cases came from paint and the lead and healthy homes program not through the water department is that is that accurate I think I think that's true if I mean I can't speak for the health department but that's I think where the biggest exposure especially for kids for children is lead paint okay or other sources of lead not lead in the water it's correct and you can't remember a case in which you tested the water and you were like holy crap this is not cool yeah I know I know we've never been above 15 I know that for for a fact and I think we've been probably close to one below one maybe a little bit below one part p bilion over it depends on the sample but it's been very low okay and this is just thoughts going forward to against build off of councilwoman LS um I know that there had been some grants that that opportunity has probably closed by now but it was like these environmental or environmental justice grants that cities or universities and cities were combining resources to go after these much larger grants the one I'm thinking was the one in Allen was like $25 million but if if another opportunity like that comes along maybe a three City coalition to go after one of those larger grants that have to do with an environmental justice lens regarding water because it's such a that's it's a pretty even Keel thing everybody wants access to healthy clean water so thank you sure councilman wilh I appreciate all the great questions from my colleagues and all of the the great information and assurances that you provided I was um one additional thing I was just wondering about you mention I was glad to hear the testing is free uh especially since we have press here would you mind sharing how people can uh contact the city or access tests for themselves so we have a the email is lead service line at um Bethlehem dp. goov lead service line lead service line all one word all one word yes at Bethlehem p.gov lead service line Bethlehem PA yes got it and that's it they simply send an email and you will mail a test or you come to we we have toate with the homeowner like I said we're only really focusing on those that we know or suspect to have lead lines we're honestly we just do not have the resources to sample everybody in the city okay you know if if if they know they have a a copper line or um or something else you know honestly we just don't have the resources to do the whole city and if everybody starts calling are there tests out there that the general public can procure there are I don't know how accurate they are okay um you know we they're probably when I say accurate they probably have some level of error to them so there might be like a gross approximation of what the lead level is in your water you know we follow pretty pretty rigorous laborat standards so our numbers um you can trust as being kind of valid that you know the the accepts says okay we say it's one part per billion they're they trust us because we follow strict that records they're not gonna they're not going to take a sample that you that you get off of Amazon like a sample kit that you buy a store or something that that's not going to that's not going to fly okay and if somebody doesn't you know for whatever reason you're not able to work with a customer but they email the line is you know can they be in touch with your department and say you know could you direct us toward y we could a reputable yep and we've been a lot of calls the last week ever since the letter went out so problem great okay thanks again for all the information Mr Buell I just had a quick question what year roughly did we start putting the corrosion inhibitor in the water I say 1990 is okay some run in understood thank you and then I'll just again give my thanks because I know while this came up and there's been a lot of attention to it because of the letters that went out you did share some of the parts per billion numbers at our budget hearing last week so people who were able to reach out to some of us in the interm between last week and now after they got the letter I know I was able to kind of screenshot your presentation and share with them some of those numbers which put some of my neighbors at because I know two people who live just up the street for me had reached out to me um individually so thank you for some of this information even before and and as always I'll just ask as we move through 2025 and this project in the years ahead we was appreciate the information keeping us informed of course our Public Works committee this is the scope of that committee the water department so we could have more conversations as they come up whether it be a council meeting or elsewhere um I'll go back to uh councilwoman CR Smith do you have any other questions for Mr boscolo before I open it up to other council members before I give you the floor back councilwoman L sorry two more questions um when did the rule change happen from the EPA like how long ago did they make this it was late 80s is was it I mean the current like what's triggering the letters right now uh it just came out well there was well there was a rule change in 2021 and then there was one in 20 just it was published in 23 became effective in 24 so there it's it's called the lead and copper rule improvements okay and then um after the lead is removed so theoretically in the the 10e after that 10year period um are they saying that the corrosion inhibitor should still be added to water is that still recommended is that so is that required like how does that uh work once the lead is gone well we do have it's called the lead and copper rule so there are limits on copper as well and of course most Services the most new services will be copper and there is an upper limit on copper in water um we're also below those limits as well so to answer your question yes we will probably have to keep adding the corrosion inhibitor for as long as the letter R is in existence yes thank you any need councilman W just just very quickly I I I do just feel compelled to remark uh as it relates to some earlier public comments in in all sincerity that the role of our department heads is much more than just raising rates as you've heard um Mr bua describing this extremely important issue uh that you know keeping residents of Bethlehem safe and healthy is a a really important job and you've been doing it for a long time and I could say the same about many of our department heads so I just really um again and all sincerity wanted to make that comment so thank you thank you do you have something else from Mr B Mr call yes so so all the new homes are using PVC piping in the interior why is is there a reason why we can't use PVC piping from the main into the house instead of copper and we do in some cases uh po it's not PVC it's the polypropylene high density po polypropylene the the the one problem is you can't um scan it you know when you do a one call to find it I'm getting into the details here but right when you do a one call you use a metal detector to find the buried utilities because they're all made out of steel or metal right so if everything's made of plastic you either need a indicator tape or you know you're not gonna find it so right but I think the I think broadly speaking a lot of industry is going that way to seem more plastic it's just a question of of getting it more into the into the ground but we do use it for services in very limited applications but the very the ma vast majority of ser new services are copper thank you anything else from Mr BCA councilwoman KY Smith the floor is still yours thank you thank you the uh the second thing I wanted to pick up is I had a call later uh today and I'm not sure if anyone's aware like fire please about concerns with um the folks that are um living in tense down by the water having some fires or is anyone aware of that that some folks are saying they're concerned about that because of the drought and I will Chief like before we take the mic just acknowledge mayor reynolds's with us welcome a certainly anytime that we've received any complaints about those we handle it just like we do any other open burn complaint go down extinguish the uh the fire and then try to obtain identification and if they've received a warning then uh they can be cited and if they haven't received a warning in the past and they're issued a warning and advised of the uh uh ordinance related to open burning I I just want to make sure that someone's aware of it because um someone had called with concerns so you're aware that it may be happening or it is happening from time to time we get calls throughout the entire city of people okay because someone call said they like recently saw fires and their concerns okay down by the encampment so something maybe to just keep an eye on certainly okay thank you thank you any other new business for members of council I guess I just was going to bring up because I think Mr Farber brought up about the auction and the vehicle auction and I'm surmising here and maybe someone from Administration can help but I'm surmising that the vehicles are at a point where it's just like having any car where you get to the point where you have to trade it in and get a new car I'm surprising that's why we have these vehicle auctions is that correct Mr Evans okay thank you and also they're emergency vehicles so we need to have reliable vehicles for fire police EMS yeah and some some of the vehicles on the list are also going 247 365 the public safety they don't drive like a residential car they're on the road every day all day thank you that's all thank you councilwoman any other new business for members of council councilwoman Leo I just had a question about the like the internal communication so we had a resident that said that they had been bounced around City Hall a little bit um so I'm not sure who within the administration can address this but what is the process if someone calls with a very specific complaint um and then it goes from one Department to another to another how do we make sure that that Loop is closed and that Resident issue is getting resolved so the service center when a phone call comes in and if somebody says you know sometimes people call and I just want to give you kind of like the different kind of like decision tree here is if somebody comes in and says like I have a question about a pothole the person the service center is like we're going to send that to public works if they say well I'd like to talk to the water department about my pothole they're like we think you'd probably want to talk to Public Works what sometimes happens is that I'm not saying in this case in particular but sometimes people contact different departments about the same problem or they have them working on different things one of the things that we're currently working on now and I will say that the situation has improved a lot but there's a long way to go is how do we necessarily have the dispatchers the people that get those calls in be able to communicate with people within the Departments Beyond just like sending the phone call up and things like that in an ideal situation you would have a situation where like a call comes in and Rachel calls about her particular pothole and the dispatcher is able to in to put that information email it here's the information and so on and so forth because sometimes you might be connected there and the person might be on the phone or they might get back to you and create the record and things like that because of our and I remember having this conversation with councilman lar is because we have different systems that have been built out between Community plus where a lot of our kind of uh resident kind of area complaints come from like our finance plus we don't necessarily have one particular system that's able to tie all of those things together we are improving that when I was part of the mayor's uh thing with Bloomberg last year in Harvard that was what kind of our project was was how do we kind of improve that efficiency process as far as you know this communication is concerned and things like that um but it is a situation where we don't have it where we should have it as far as technolog is concerned but we've made a lot of progress um but you know if you call about your pothole the dispatcher doesn't call you back somebody from Public Works calls you back um but we also have multiple communication lines people email people call and things like that so basically we rely on those individuals to get back to people to kind of close that particular Loop but once it leaves the service center like they're on to the next call which whether or not it has to do with 911 or police or fire or whatever that might be um but it is a thing that we've kind of talked about internally about how we necessarily improve improve the technology that allows say somebody in codes or inspections to be able to get that information that has come in from the from the call and if it's a situation that's kind of more complex than a pothole all paths usually lead back to Mike alcohol but in a situation where it isn't just Public Works where there's like a dced component to it because there was a negotiation with the city and and the resident how do we make sure that that Loop is being closed if it does have to to cross departments and it's not just something as simple as yeah one of the things that we've worked on too is like breaking down like the silos within City Hall so then sometimes it used to be that two well-meaning people might be working on the same thing and they didn't even think to call somebody else in one these other departments we've really kind of talked about how we can make that process more efficient um but you're right sometimes there's something that and I think the the place that it crosses over the most is often between something Community Economic Development and something in public works but usually it doesn't cross usually it's not just responsibilities that kind of cross over it's just it falls more in one side than the other so then there's just the back and forth about who got back to this person and who and and who did not get back to this person so we just kind of rely on collaboration we talk about it um I will say Mr alol and Miss Collins are both great about saying like hey look this is a trend we've seen that's come up in this particular area we want to work on that and things like that that's something they were constantly kind of talking about and having conversations about um but the whole like do we process this information like Bethlehem like a lot of cities can make a lot of very expensive it upgrades at some point to be able to make that process even more efficient thank you any other new business for members of council Mr Callan just uh echoing What U councilwoman Leon said I I would also um encourage any of our citizens uh anytime they call in to write down the department that they spoke to and the person that they spoke to and possibly followed up with an email because then there's a a record of of um a lot of times when you make a phone call uh things might get dropped and you have no idea who who you spoke to or who was responsible for getting back or for who was responsible for handling it so I think uh you know after the phone call an email would be probably good idea and also logging in like who or or or noting who you spoke to and and what they were going to address because um I've had the same complaints from other people about weeds growing uh and not just in you know the area that we you know that you were talking about but weeds growing garbage out you know in front of a property and uh weeks and weeks go by and and nothing's done so and that's basically what you know I've told everybody else in the past and I would just and I would add to that is often times too and this is why it's good to talk to somebody the process to remediate these things is often a process so in the case of if you're talking about weeds if you're talking about housing violations oftentimes that involves there is a you know someone's going before the Magistrate on April 22nd or whatever is it's not something that necessarily can be solved in this exact moment so having that knowledge of who that person is so they can call you and say like this is where that process is like the reason why you don't necessarily see this thing fixed per se or the grass cut per se is because we've cited them and we're waiting to go or they've appealed or whatever it might be there's often a kind of a logistical or practical process so understanding who you kind of talk to helps to have that educational piece about where you are and why things are are are the way they are because I mean I've gone through that too Mr call where I sometimes I will ask Mr alcol like what what what's happened with this thing we talked about this thing this thing three weeks ago and then Mr alcal will sit down and he'll be like well this is the process that we need to follow I need to contact them then they have to 10 days and then we have to solve this and then we got to do this and this I'm like it takes that long to work through this even if you're working as hard as you can and as efficiently as you can he's like yeah that's that's just the way the process is laid out so I agree with you having that kind of contact and also if people are able to email it's easier to be able to kind of send that timeline of like where it is in the process to that individual we know not everybody has email but like it is it is a good it is a good thing if there's somebody that you're emailing back and forth with because then they're able to um and then it's easier too for us to be able to email and start an email and Chan things like that Mr call anything else any other new business members Council councilwoman Leo I just wanted to close the end of that conversation with it it just seems to to be that the best way to get a a issue resolved is to go through the service center it seems like the most tracking the most efficient way of doing it is through the service center and not calling um individual and and I'm curious as to that are are there other phone numbers po posted that might confuse people that they can directly reach public works or something like that where they should be going through the service center yeah and I forget when it was Mr clone you might remember when Mr Nik came in here and kind of explained to us and uh he kind of went through that that they it was during the Don Administration I don't know if it was kind of five year I think it was pre-pandemic 2018 2019 where they kind of went through why they went with the service center model and just kind of like the tree of like where the calls go um it probably is a good idea for that conversation to happen again at some point um you know maybe at a committee meeting or something to kind of explain how that works um but it was the old way things worked like before the service center was you would call five different departments you'd have five different departments working on it they would all be burning valuable time that they could be spending helping other people and then somebody and this still happens occasionally um Miss Stein had an inter action with somebody a couple weeks ago where they reached out and they sent an email and they said you know I hadn't heard about these five things and I contacted Public Works in water and of course we had the record of when we had gotten back to this person so miss Stein then responded back to them with the times and everything else that we were able to solve this but the amount of time that this took because this person had contacted five different departments essentially asking the same question looking for a different answer was one that obviously soow slowed down that efficiency process because around here time is our biggest are the biggest thing we don't have so when Mr neatnik and that crew put in the decision tree it was to make that as efficient as possible um so like if you call and say you know I want to talk to Steph in the mayor's office about my pothole they're saying well if you talk to Steph she's gonna call Public Works Public Works is then gonna have to call Steph back and then Steph's gonna have to call this person and talk about the pothole so if like you really want to talk to Steph you can but the best place for you to talk in the most efficient way for everybody is talked right here to public public works so that was kind of that was created like kind of like five six years ago when we were doing the 911 transition um to be able to cut down on that like multiple people working on the same particular issue um and um it's been really efficient at some point we can go through how many calls every year we get more and more phone calls to our service center more and more phone calls get redirected we're working on more and more responses the app has also made it easier for us to respond to people quickly and things like that um but that's the kind of that's the kind of process that that that we go through if it's easy sometimes it could be just Mr spurk sitting here it's you know someone's like you know the city has an easement here from 1974 nobody knows that off the top of their head so it's like we got to get back to you um but you know the ones that can be solved quickly uh and those are the ones that's when we get the most phone calls during snow during leaf collection and things like that and that's pretty clear about who it goes to thank you and I would agree president cologne I'm not sure that this is my um May of my uh committee but whatever committee it is that that this conversation would fall under it seems like a breakdown in communication um really happens with because we have so many communication Avenues and we're not sure which one to go through so maybe a in-depth conversation about how do we actually communicate the need for the city services that we have um and how do those residents communicate when there's laps lapses in that so you know like a conversation for us to have as a council would would be beneficial thank you for sure I will say and I was just double checking if I'm not mistaken the service center falls under the police department and we have our I'll be announcing the budget hearing I mean it's about the budget but as we know from other experience just kind of not to make the whole budget hearing about service center operations but that's a good place to get some kind of preliminary questions answered I would say yeah and I'll touch face with the other committee members to see if they're agreeable to a conversation regarding this thank you mayy yeah and just I wanted to add to that is one of the things that we're working on doing as well and and Council Malone we found this when we did our communication study like six years ago I guess in 2018 one of the challenges we have as city is that people get their information different ways some people get it from the newsletter some people get it from email blast some people get it from the app some people get it from social media so trying to design a communication strategy is easier said than easier said than done uh Miss wri actually through the health department we had uh grant money available that we are taking that on again as far as taking a look at communication strategies and things like that one thing that we are trying to do for the first time is create some formal kind of responses when people call the um uh call downstairs to the service center in that and we have some employees that are like hello you've reached the city of Bethlehem how may I help you and other people are like service center so like if you're just you know John Q public and you call you know you don't know if you got the right place you don't know if that's intimidating or not so we are trying to work on I'm not sure if script is the best word but like when when we answer the phone like this is what we answer with and they also have the same type of response for the same type of question so you know it's so it's a little bit more formal but it's also more wel coming as far as like this is we know what the service center does but if you're calling and you want to talk to Mr basca like you don't know if you got the wrong right place you might hang up the phone you you don't know so we're trying to really formalize that in a way that will make it easier for Citizens when they call in to feel welcome and know where they're going I've called the service center as as as a full on council person just calling the service center and heard click click service center I'm like I didn't mean to call the cops about a trash can so like it like the end user experience is actually extremely important so I would really love to address that at some point I call the service center sometimes just to see how they answer the phone I'll I'll add to that just as someone who used to be a 911 dispatcher many years ago different reason people are calling but that's all standardized including to Mr cahan's Point essentially like your ID number so when when we would answer we had it programmed where we didn't even greet the person we would record a greeting so that when we answer the phone it automatically greeted everyone the same so the recording was an automatic greeting our voices of course and identifying who we were too so that's just something that is you know good to have those standards in place um Council M do you have anything else no thank you councilwoman L uh when you say the service center falls under the police so we can talk about that at that uh budget conversation would that mean that if there was some sort of of uh down the road a ticketing system put in uh which is what I've I've talked with the mayor about before uh to help people track workflows and communication across departments would that fall under the police budget or like because it would be tied to that first point of uh you know the ticket coming in at the service center I think it would have to be a conversation i' try to avoid answer ing good systemic questions like that without doing a research and I'm I'm not I'm not sure but I what I do know is it would take obviously a lot of planning collaboration um to figure out how to do it but but absolutely and as you said mayor there's um significant expense that goes along with ticketing systems like that um and additionally expense with Communications personnel and systems has that been something that's been discussed um as a potential future role in the city to have a Communications staff person or a broad Communications plan that addresses all of the different channels of communication and audiences um so to streamline everything yeah and so then it was like I said we had initially done it back in 2018 um that I included part of betham 2017 wouldn't we had kind of done it informally we did the survey and things like that and you know we were able to get some answers at the time but the work that miss wrick is able to start through some health grant funding allows for that Communications kind of study to to to be looked at as far as what we're doing and what we're what works and we'll see what recommendations come out of that but I mean whatever the recommendations come out of that will be ones that we will consider whether or not it's Personnel or different ways of Comm so that's not a health specific scope uh okay I I Mis includes the health Bureau right but it is the way the RFP was written is to be able to include all City Communications great any other new business from members of council thank you everyone we're going to move on to Communications 6A November 8th 2024 memorandum and proposed resolution from Laura Collins director of community and economic development M Collins recommends contract amendment number four with scan Tech infom Management Solutions of Willow Grove to continue digitize files for dced the additional cost for Amendment 4 is $ 53,723 and the new completion date is December 31st 2025 there are no renewals and resolution 10A is on the agenda tonight communication 6B November 4th 2024 memorandum and proposed resolution from Laura Collins director of community and economic development Miss Collins recommends a contract with Woodsong Associates of Portland Oregon to team with the city and Lehi University to research and recommend best practices related to zoning reform for accessory dwelling units and to develop and codify Adu Provisions for the City cost of $65,000 the completion deadline is December 31st 2025 there are no renewal and resolution 10B is on the agenda communication 6C a November 13 2024 memorandum with a proposed resolution an agreement from director of water and sewer resources Edward boscola and city solicitor johnf spurk Jr the two recommend an agreement with mcnees Wallace and Nu LLC of Harrisburg to represent the city involving water utility Regulatory and transactional matters and representation before the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Duties are fully detailed in an October 14th 2024 proposal cost is not to exceed $25,000 for the initial term there are three annual automatic renewals for 2026 through 2028 the collective cost of these is not to exceed $100,000 over the additional three years and resolution 10c is on the agenda tonight 6D November 14 2024 memorandum and proposed resolution from Laura Collins director of community and economic development the brandom seeks support to apply for a local Share account Grant from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth financing Authority requesting up to $60,000 to help fund the 2025 Celtic classic Highland Games and festival and resolution 10d is on the agenda this evening 6E November 11th 2024 memorandum from Sandra sell director of purchasing Miss stel provided an attached list of equipment and vehicles recommended for sale within the next 60 days at an online auction the proposed auction is in accordance with provisions of resolution 2995 so as we see these from time to time if Council has no objections to the property listed the items may be added to the online auction if Council would like to discuss a specific item then that same shall be removed from the list and then discussed at the next council meeting which would be December 3rd would any member of council like to remove any of the items from the list and discuss it at the next council meeting I don't see any so it will be communicated to our purchasing director that city council has no objections to auctioning the listed property thank you 6f in October 24th 2024 communication from Attorney John McShay on behalf of Pennsylvania Avenue Development LLC with a petition requesting a text Amendment to the zoning ordinance involving 8:15 Pennsylvania Avenue an accompanying petition identifies the properties used as a licensed personal care home petitioner requests the city counil amend the ordinance to address the Adaptive reuse of existing industrial uses located within in the RS single family residential zoning district and the RT high density residential zoning District he further states that the amendment uh proposes to facilitate conversion of existing healthc care buildings into different healthc care uses so I will accept a motion followed by a second schedule a public hearing for December 17 2024 to consider and discuss this rezoning request so second motion by councilwoman leair second by councilwoman Wilhelm forgive me motion by councilwoman Leon second by councilwoman Wilhelm I get that right any discussion Mr Miller Miss Wilhelm hi Mr Callahan hi Miss grmy Smith hi Miss quch hi Miss lard hi Leon hi and Mr colog I pass 70 so the public hearing scheduled for 7 pm on December 17th 6G November 13 2024 memorandum with a proposed resolution from city solicitor John fburg Jr requesting the destruction of records from the law Bureau solicitor spurk has reviewed the municipal records retention Act and the records listed on the exhibit accompanying the memo fall within the categories where destruction is permitted and a resolution will be placed on our December 3rd city council agenda 6h November 13 2024 memorandum and attached proposed ordinance from city solicitor jnf spark Jr solicitor spark recommends council's consideration for awarding a cable television franchise system to Comcast of southeast Pennsylvania LLC and ordinance 9A is on the agenda this evening 6 I November 14th 2024 memorandum and proposed resolution from Council president Michael cologne president cologne recommends transferring consideration of matters involving the Bethlehem parking authority from council's Public Safety Committee to the community and economic development committee to do so would require amending rule eight of council rules and a resolution to change our Council r rules will be on the December 3rd city council agenda moving on to reports the only thing I want to remind everyone of as I had mentioned a little bit earlier we're going to have our third budget hearing that's going to be this coming Monday November 25th at 6m here in town hall and we're going to cover our community and economic development department the Community Development block grant fund our police department and our fire department and all the bureaus that fall under each of those departments all I had this evening Mr Mayor uh thank you I have several administrative orders uh first one is I hear by appoint reappoint Linda boner at 429 ha Street Department G3 betham PA 18015 the appropriate Mental Health Services Board and this reappointment is effective through October 2028 administrative order 202 2432 Linda Bonner Mental Health Services appeal board resolution sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss grmy Smith discussion we'll call the rooll Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan hi M gmy Smith hi Miss quch hi Miss L hi Miss Leon hi and Mr colom I pass 70 thank you I uh hereby reappoint uh councilman Grace cramsey Smith 10 East Church Street betham PA 18018 to the appropriate Mental Health Services Board this reappointment is effective through October 2028 administrative order 2024 33 for Grace kmy Smith to be reappointed in the mendal Health Services appeal board resolution sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmy Smith discussion I just have a question oh I'll start with councilwoman quch I'm I would just like a little more information about what the mental health services appeal board is does who it's sanctioned by like you know is it County city I I believe it was I will defer to councilman kmy Smith as a member of the board in a second but I would say I think it was created as part of the human relations um uh ordinance that we passed in 2011 um but I um I uh and then I think all of the appointees come from the mayor's office um but councilwoman kmy Smith has been a a member now before so she can probably speak about her Council experience on the board it actually was developed and I'm not certain of the Year perhaps 2019 when I believe it was councilwoman Callahan um proposed and we passed an ordinance Banning conversion therapy in the city so that it bans um any therapist within the city limits of doing conversion therapy relative to sexual gender and orientation um and at that point it was um mayor donchez said appointed me as a council representative since it was a council developed board we only meet once a year very very briefly because fortunately we have had no instances of uh reported conversion therapy hopefully that will continue but um with the new federal Administration it it may not but let's hope it does thank you for that information I don't I really didn't realize that was the connection was to the conversion therapy uh piece I really appreciate that context and and just Mr clone we also did look it up and there's nothing that prohibits her as a council person from serving on this board understood Council L uh just a technical question uh the address listed I believe is City Hall is that an error or is that like I that I'm not used to hearing City Hall address as the one in the administrative orders I moved here I live here now full time job depending what time we get out wall feel like we live here because you're serving in the official capacity as a member of council as a council representative yeah just wanted to make sure that there wasn't I've seen that before I'm not really sure I've seen it before um I'm not sure where address for Council Members I'm not sure if it's just because we're council members but um I believe my resume was attached with my home address like I said a technicality but just wanted to make sure it doesn't trip anything up I I don't believe it makes any material difference and our solicitor is not approval any other discussion for members of council Mr Miller M Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I miss grmy Smith hi miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I Mr colum I pass 70 I he by reappoint Richard beby 3302 Broadway Allentown PA 18014 to the betham Fine Arts commission this appointment is effective through November 2027 administrative order 2024 34 Richard beby reappointed to the Bethlehem Fine Arts commission resolution is sponsored by Miss will Helman Miss kmy Smith discussion call roll Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I miss grmy Smith I miss quch I miss L I miss Leon I and Mr colog I pass 70 uh next administrative order I hearby appoint Khloe Cole Wilson 409 East Broad Street betham PA 1808 of the betham Fine Arts commission this appointment is effective through May 2027 administrative order 202 2435 Khloe Cole Wilson appointed to the Bethlehem Fine Arts commission the resolution sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss crampy Smith discussion um Miss quch I just want to say how um thrilled and excited that Khloe Cole Wilson is joining the Fine Arts commission um I think she'll make a great addition thank you any other discussion we'll call the role M Wilhelm I Mr Callahan hi m kmy Smith I miss quch i m lard i m Leon I and Mr colum I pass 70 I hereby uh appoint Deborah sarakis 931 Laurel Drive betham PA 18017 to the betham Fine Arts commission this appointment is effective through September 2027 administrative order 2024 36 for Deborah sarakis to the Bethlehem Fine Arts commission resolution sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmy Smith discussion councilwoman I I just want to say thank you for your service I think you might be the only person here that's being appointed and um to all the others thank you appreciate it any other discussion thanks for coming out Miss Accra we'll call the role is Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I miss crampsey Smith hi miss quch I miss L hi Miss Leon I Mr cologne I passed 70 and I hereby reappoint Salvatore B ver asro 172 Billman Drive suet 200 bethleem PA 1805 to the codes board of appeals this appoint reappointment is effective through November of uh 20127 administrative order 2024 37 Salvador B ver asro reappointed to the code board of appeals resolution is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmy Smith discussion we'll call the role Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan i m cron Smith i m quac i m l i m Leon hi and Mr cologne I pass 70 thank you just a couple other updates um one is uh next Friday um we will have our tree lighting ceremony outside um so hopefully we can see everybody there um also uh this past weekend I had a chance to attend um the St Nick of Bethlehem Premiere if you have a chance to see the the new uh movie from Danny robuk I think it's going to play at steel stack soon there was a packed house it's um got a lot of Bethlehem shots in there if you have a chance to see it um last week we had um a couple of uh uh good updates and I know um I saw some council members there the Southside tomorrow annual meeting um was uh just a great opportunity to talk to uh and hang out with many of our community members some of our small businesses um and just talk about a lot of that great work that is going on within that group so um you know it is it is the time of year where we have a lot of annual meetings I Believe on Thursday to uh we have our North Side alive annual meeting from 6 to8 I think it's at the betham YMCA I believe that's where it's the meeting's at um uh but that Southside tomorrow's meeting was fantastic as was our climate action plan annual update last week as well um we at our nine implementation groups we had a citizen who's part of the betham climate challenge that was here um and uh once again if uh if anybody's looking for any information having to do with any of those things please please let us know and then um the last thing I would uh say is I was in uh I was in Harrisburg today to be on a couple of panels um associated with the um Superior administration's uh executive order on housing and um you there's a lot of respect for from people both within the administration but also within Energy Efficiency fields and things like that for a lot of the work that we do here in the LI Valley and here in Bethlehem and you know there was um people definitely pay attention to how passionate we are about it how much work we've done uh simple things like how we put private and public sectors in the same room um which is not something happens a lot of other places um but the governor's executive um order um which is essentially going to follow the same process that they that they followed to put together his economic development plan which led to $500 million in the budget for his PA sites program as well as mainstream matters and things like that um you know they're very excited about um what they think is possible and what the housing issues are that are facing uh communities urban and rural throughout the Commonwealth and one of the things that came up over and over again um was the fact that people are facing the same challenges that we are and uh it was something that you know we had an opportunity to talk about it um a lot and like I said they had asked me to be on some of the panels to kind of talk about our housing process they had read through our plan they had been impressed with all all the data they impressed with all the different options all the different work that that's been involved there and I just want to pass that along um because because of that you know work couldn't have been done without the support of city council and um they're going to go on some listening tours where they're going to come to different areas and they're certainly coming to leav valy to kind of understand what each area needs um but it is certainly I think going to be their administration's 2025 priority um and like I said it is such an urgent urgent need for people throughout the state um that you left it was both sobering and optimistic to see um the governor and his staff uh trying to listen to what's going on to come up with a plan um that will mirror kind of their Economic Development because that's the thing that came up in their their Economic Development conversations and it didn't matter if they were talking to health networks or you know institutions of Higher Learning or whatever business it was we don't have a place for our employees to live and you know it's obviously a problem in Bethlehem and in the lehab valley um you know we've added all these jobs if some people are driving in from Carbon County they're driving from Monroe County they're driving in from all over the place because the economic opportunities here in the Lea Valley and here in the city um and that's a that's a common problem going on um but they just they they were I think a little bit surprised at first with how many economic development conversations came up with people in the private sector and the public sector didn't matter Republican Democrat where they said our problem is the housing Supply we need more housing Supply at every price point and um you know like I said it was uh sobering but I left optimistic that I believe that the state is going to take a large role um and that's particularly important because we don't know what's going to happen with the federal government we just there's that I will being kind where I'm saying there's uncertainty about about what is going to be the future of a lot of those programs that cities and municipalities have relied on so that's my report thank you president CL thank you mayor Reynolds I'll turn to our finance committee chair councilwoman ksey Smith thank you the finance committee will meet on Tuesday December 3rd 2024 at 5:30 p.m. in town hall budget adjustments will be on the agenda please know it the meeting was to be six but there's many items on the agenda so the meeting will start at 5:30 thank you Grace kampy Smith chairwoman of the finance committee thank you councilwoman we don't have any ordinances for final passage tonight so we'll get into all the new ordinances we'll start with 9A an ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth of Pennsylvania pursuant to article 908 at SEC of the C ordinance of the city of Bethlehem granting a cable television franchise system to Comcast of Southeast Pennsylvania LLC bill number 44 2024 is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss crampy Smith discussion we'll call the role Miss Wilhelm i m Callahan I M grmy Smith I miss quch I miss L I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 9B nordon of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth in Pennsylvania adopting the general fund budget for 2025 bill number 45 2024 sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kampsy Smith before I open up to discussion because we're gonna have a lot of uh first readings here for the budget ordinances I just remind everybody whether on Council or the audience or anyone following along later that historically we've always had the first any ordinance needs to have two readings we always have the first meting at the second meeting of November which is tonight we do have our last budget hearing next week as I previously announced and then if anyone wants to propose any budget amendments there will be adequate time for that and then we'll have another budget hearing to review those amendments to potentially if it's the wolf Council incorporate them into the second budget um reading which would be the second meeting of December which is when we always historically pass the budget so this is just part of the process and and how it plays out every year so this is just the first reading of what we have to have which would be two yeah and then I I will just make a quick note for up to discussion that uh we heard from a member of the public about some of the historical stuff and and our budget books I don't have a budget book with me tonight of course is the night I left it at home but the budget books show those historical figures for all the different line items so it's something that the budget even the proposed budget is already posted on the city's website and I I invite everyone to always look at it and you can see line item by line item all the different revenues all the different expenditures and how they track over the last couple years any discussion on 9B for members of council we'll call the role Miss wilh home I Mr Callahan hi Miss kmy Smith hi Miss quch hi M lard hi Miss Leon Mr colog all pass 70 9 C ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton come we of Pennsylvania adopting the water fund budget for 2025 bill number 46 2024 is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss grmy Smith discussion we'll call the rooll Miss Wilhelm hi Mr Callahan I M gry Smith I miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr colog I pass 70 9d an ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth of Pennsylvania adopting the sewer fund budget for 2025 bill number 47 2024 sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmy Smith discussion we'll call roll Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I M grmy Smith hi miss quch I miss L I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 99e ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth of Pennsylvania adopting the golf course Enterprise fund budget for 2025 bill number 48 2024 is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kampy Smith discussion we'll call the rooll Miss wilham I Callahan I miss gron Smith I miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 9f ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh Northampton Commonwealth of Pennsylvania adopting the liquid fund budget for 2025 bill number 49 2024 is sponsored by Miss wilham and Miss grmy Smith discussion we'll call the rooll Miss Wilhelm hi Mr Callahan hi M grmy Smith I I miss lard I Leon I Mr colog I pass 70 9g ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth of Pennsylvania adopting the 2025 capital budget for non- utilities bill number 50 2024 sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmsy Smith discussion we'll call the rooll Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan i m crampy Smith I miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I Mr colum I pass 70 9h ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth of Pennsylvania adopting the 2025 capital budget for water utilities bill number 51 2024 sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kampsy Smith discussion we'll call roll Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I M grmy Smith I miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 n i ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Conwell of Pennsylvania adopting the 2025 capital budget for sewer utilities bill number 52 2024 sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss grmy Smith discussion Mr Miller Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I miss grmy Smith I miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 9j ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth of penl adopting the Community Development block grant budget for 2025 bill number 53 2024 sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss grmy Smith discussion call R Miss Wilhelm i m Callahan I M grmy Smith I miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr colum I pass 70 9k ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton Commonwealth of Pennsylvania adopting the storm water fund budget for 2025 bill number 54 2024 is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss grmy Smith discussion we call roll Miss Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I M grmy Smith i m quch i SL I Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 and our last new ordinance 9l an ordinance of the city of Bethlehem counties of Lehigh and Northampton conwal of Pennsylvania fixing the tax rate for all All City purposes for the year 2025 bill number 55 2024 is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmsy Smith discussion councilwoman okay um I had a quick question for uh Mr Evans and um so there was a question earlier regarding um all of the very specific things that we have like is there a way to do a general overview like a one pager um and I know that budgets are intense and you have to explain line item by line item but has there been a consideration to like just these very specific things this was last year this was this year that's it with just these specific things or is the concern that that would like you have to explain it anyway so I I I'm just curious as to why we don't do a one-pager kind of summation of what we're doing here there's too much I mean you know the budget book we spent a lot of time with the budget book and it's hundreds of pages I will tell you and hope you have comfort and understanding that I believe our budget is a most transparent and thorough budget you'll see if you compare to any other City go online look at how much we do deliver with regard to hisor as well as actual to projected I think we spend a tremendous time amount of time to do that so I'm very um pleased that we are able to provide that with it the amount of time it takes I think it's important to do that but uh I think it would be disservice to try and put all of that information to I don't know how we do it into one page that's why we spend the three hours not the three hours but three nights of hearings to go through everything three hours each night in order to complete that but you know I think that's what we so I was thinking about Mr W Weber statements about um what it is like to hold office so I get the budget handed to me that's not the end result for all of our our residents so how does our if a resident wants to see all 300 plus pages of the budget how do they see that it is we posted the same day the mayor releases a budget address it's posted to our website so it's in a PDF form searchable PDF so anything they may want to look they can use the search bar and find anything there's also a table of contents in the front of the because it's such a large book but the table of contents I think makes a little bit easier to follow and to take a look at each department by Department doesn't have the tabs like a book A book is going to be but there's also a significant cost of printing that many books and the you P of paper so that we believe the digital version and the accessibility makes it easy for everyone to access and use okay so any Resident who wants to view the budget in its entirety can do so via a PDF that is available on our website yes and I would just add to that Council Malon is you know the last couple of years we have I mean I think the budget hearings have been anywhere from like 12 to 14 hours between all of them together due to the complexx it of it and due to just how many different moving Parts there are like the capital fund and the water sewer fund and things like that um it is why I both try to hit the highlights or the significant changes but also I would say it is something that and we've talked a lot about how it's not something I understand why somebody doesn't want to necessarily sign up for the full like 14 hours but it's also a little bit like asking for Cliff Notes to like a thousand page book or like a 500 page book like it's not you can't do it justice to basically simplify you lose the perspective of what the numbers mean and the comparisons and things like that um I would say that you know the reason why I tried to go over the same part of my budget presentation that I had done on the morning of the breakfast here was so for people that weren't there they could kind of see what both those Central kind of tenants are of how we put the budget together as well as what those big changes are um but I I don't it's something we've had conversations about before but I would agree with Mr Evans that when you look at what other cities do and how they kind of put things out there and how they necessarily put line items they almost look like long Excel documents with like 19 different categories there is there is you know more information versus less information you put less information in there you will hear from people like you changed it you're not being as transparent as you once were you put too much information in there well there's much information you're trying to bury Us in information I mean we've seen that Dynamic before in this room with different topics where it's either you're not giving us an information or then if I give you the information you're giving me too much information so it's a it's kind of it's kind of a catch 22 um but you know it's one of the reasons why to like we've always and it's up to council's discretion if to have those quarterly budget conversations in March and June and August to talk more about them usually there's not too much interest in doing it at that point but you know we're open to having more conversations throughout the year about how that budget is coming together um but we think the best thing is to kind of Hit the highlights and what the biggest changes are from the previous year yeah I I like that idea of quarterly but that's not my committee but I love the idea of quarterly because it really helps us get our our head around it way before December thank you councilwoman qu thank you um one of the questions that the commenter had that I think is important though is that it is not clear when you look at the ordinance about the um fixing the tax rate that there is no change to our tax rate this year that we are not um increasing taxes in this budget is that correct unless Council does it but no the proposed it was not there's it is it is this it is the same as budget is the same tax rate yes thank you very much that was my only question councilwoman Le uh just to clarify the um location of the proposed budget on the website if you go to the betham dp. goov click on city government then budgets and audits it is the top item on that page um and then a question so this is the book that was referenced um that is available on the website if someone uh doesn't have internet access um we do have our library but is there somewhere that they can come into City Hall to not take a book but review you know if they wanted to look at a certain section or something like that uh we could provide one with a library might be a better idea oh that's a great idea yeah yeah we can do that I think I think we've done that I think we've done that in the past as a general proposition we're trying to reduce how much paper we have to print and as a guy that's now got like 18 of those things over the years like we're trying to reduce that but I think having a copy or two copies at the library I think would would be something that we certainly could do I know we've done it in years past that' be great thank you any other discussion Ju Just a couple points I'll not and counc quch brought up that the rate Remains the Same uh there are two different millage rates for those of us who live in Lehigh County versus those of us who live in Northampton County and that just has to do with how assessments work and anyone who lives in Lehigh County for a number of years knows the county did a more recent countywide assessment uh compared to Northampton County which hasn't done one in a few decades 30 years mayor Reynolds is implying and so that's why the I remember when I started coming to Council meetings many years ago budget hearings were the first meetings I ever attended and that was one of my first questions was just understanding that because I was a renter for many years and I didn't pay property taxes so I didn't I wasn't aware of the uh countywide assessment in Lehigh County and then to the point that councilwoman lard was making about the budget books and where you can find them on the website they're also there the historic budgets too so it's not just the most recent one it's all past budgets that you could look at as well as our audits there was the open data initiative many years ago that I know has been utilized by some members of council that shows where dollars went so there's definitely a lot of information on there and the budget books while they are U hundreds of pages again I don't have mine in front of me the table contents easily breaks it down and there is a narrative for a lot of those line items which you're just to the point that was made before you're just not going to see that and that's not typical for budget and that's uh this Administration previous administrations it's always been sort of a a standard that the city has held itself to as it presents the budgets um and it's open for public consumption to anyone who wants to look at it but anyone else discussion before we call the role Mr Miller Miss Wilhelm hi Mr tahan hi pry Smith I miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 we have a few resolutions 10A be it resolved by the Council of the city of Bethlehem that the mayor and controller Andor such other City officials as deemed appropriate by the city solicitor are hereby authorized to execute all documents and agreements with scant tech infom Management Solutions to continue the process of digitizing files for the Department of community and economic development resolution is sponsored by Miss wilham and Miss kmy Smith discussion we'll call the RO M Wilhelm I Mr Callahan I miss crampy Smith I miss quac i m l I miss Leon I and Mr colum I pass 70 10B be it resolved by the Council of the city of Bethlehem that the mayor and controller and or such other City officials deemed appropriate by the city solicitor are hereby authorized to execute all documents and agreements with Woodsong Associates to consult with the city and Lehi University to research and recommend best practice related to zoning reform for accessory dwelling units and to develop and codify Adu Provisions for the city resolution is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmy Smith before I open up to discussion uh I will turn to the administration fway wants to give us just an overview of what we're voting on and before we get into that I will just note Council received a letter of support from one of the associate State directors from AARP uh lending their support I believe came through yesterday Mr Miller or today I believe it was uh by email yesterday yeah providing their support for the the resolution but mayor Reynolds or Miss Collins yeah this is the Lehigh grant that they got from the federal government um so it's just like they don't have the capacity to do this work so it's kind of like passing money along from the the Lehigh University had applied for this Grant and then when Lehigh University got this grant they're able to do some of the things but part of the grant is obviously this um kind of studying of like what potential type of zoning changes you would need to be able to do so since Lehi is not using their capacity to do that they asked us but the city doesn't have the capacity to do that either so we're taking that federal dollars that were going to Lehi and then Lehi sent them to us and then we just are we are taking care of that part of it for Lehi thank you mayor Reynolds any discussion from members of council I'll start with Miss Wilhelm yeah I just wanted to mention I'll be recusing myself from this vote as it's related to my employer Le University understood councilwoman quch I will also be recusing myself from voting as it is to do with my employer Lehi University thank you any other discussion councilwoman cramy Smith yeah I just I just have some questions about it um so it's it's the far Grand and the Lehigh grand um did the far Grand come directly to us then that's ours that's part of our okay and um with the grant money can the grant money also be used for like waving fees for adus and actual construction and other costs or does it have to be only for like research and consultative fees for both of the grants so um for so the $40,000 that's from the uh HUD research Grant that's uh specifically a grant that Lehi was awarded for the the re search and development of a program component of the work um the fair money uh that is predominantly the $500,000 predominantly is going to Lehi some is also going to community action um they just allocated an additional 25,000 to the zoning piece um because they decided that additional um Community engagement was going to be really important in developing um the recommendations um and so they asked to put an additional 25 5,000 to that to that purpose but the so the HUD research Grant is only for for research and development of a program the fair dollars uh the remaining you know 475,000 some of that does go to development costs um and then Lehi has a another Grant from the federal government that's the community Project funding and some of that also goes to development costs um and as part of our uh housing study and the budget that we had proposed um that combines our you know $5 million in the city budget um cdbg and home dollars other funding sources it's about $8 million total we presented that uh last year um but one of the recommendations of that plan was to have um incentives like an incentives package that might make a program like an Adu program more possible for um you know a homeowner and then also to make sure that it would be affordable so that piece has not been developed yet but that is a a component overall of of our housing plan okay so just yeah just so I'm clear because for the Lehi part it can only be used for research it can't be used for anything else and can like the students there do any of the research and they so the way that you work the money for something else and or no so so the research Grant is is specifically for research and development of the program but the way that we um work this out with Lehi and Community Action it was very much in Partnership about you you know what's the capacity of Lehi what's the capacity of the city you know and how do we build out the the full program so the Lehi uh support from uh Dr Karen bepi and some others um they are doing a a large chunk of research and specifically looking at a number of case studies from other midsize communities we've talked about the fact that a lot of Adu research is um you know focused in California and cities that aren't necessarily comparable to Bethlehem and so the work that high is taking on is specifically um really focused on on that component and and looking at the best practices for communities of our size and best practices really include not just you know what the zoning should say about setbacks or parking but also what are the incentives packages that make a program like this successful and also allow a program like this to actually contribute to affordable housing um and so that's that's the piece that Lehi is looking at um Wood song actually the the recommended group here um is is really the preeminent accessory dwelling unit expert um I think the the uh the principle of wood song actually is um you know he contributed to uh chapter to the missing middle housing book which is really like the gold standard I think of the type of housing that we collectively talk about as um you know what we're missing in places in places like Bethlehem so um you know we were he they were very excited to work with us um just because you know what what we're doing here in Bethlehem because we're a midsize city um because we're on the East Coast not the West Coast because there's so much Council support around this work and and already um Partnerships forming with you know institutions and nonprofit organizations um it's it's gaining a lot of attention because it's really you know a model that that you know if successful could be replicated a lot of places and you know as a result we've already been invited to a number of panels the u pa um Council of legislators invited us to to speak about the program uh we're work speaking on a panel at homes Within Reach so um I don't even know how I got to that part of the answer but anyway um that's that's sort of you know how all of this was determined in a nutshell in terms of how we were dividing up the work okay I guess I just asked these questions because um as I've said before I mean I just have concerns about spending so much money on Consultants like we've already spent over 200,000 on the affordable housing consultants and the homelessness shelter and um when I worked in government I mean I always was hesitant because I would about us have the money go directly to services to help the people that need it um and I looked at Wood song and I looked at the website and they they may be the preeminent people as far as adus but I couldn't find anything on about adus on their website I mean I found a lot about um you know environmental and and reducing carbon footprint and I'm again I'm sure they're working on adus but it concerns me too because I also wasn't 100% sold on the consultant for housing and on that plan so those are some of my concerns about this it's not that I'm against adus per se it's just that I want to make sure that um I would about to spend the money because I um on like fee waivers or permits for waivers and construction and things like that um I know the ARP sent us a letter but it actually was saying they support adus it wasn't saying and supporting Consultants um these this consultant fee and um I know like I looked up the American Planning Association collaborates with the AARP and they actually have an awesome resource it was just released in 2021 and it's the um Adu model State act and local ordinances and in there it's like a 56-page report that I think looks to me like what a consulant report would look like you know and I know that we're looking at you know being modeled to Bethlehem but just in my research and I've also done a couple years ago webinars with people in um Oregon and um Co Seattle on adus and I just you know know that there's just so much information out there and I just hate to see it spent on Consultants when um you know it's a large large Chun chunk of money that the information is pretty readily available um and I know even like I said before when I worked in government what we would do is we would look to other counties or other states to see how they implemented programs that we were doing initial programs and that's just my thoughts that's I really just hate to see money um you know public money spent so much on consultant fees thank you councilwoman and thank you if I mischaracterized arp's letter in my comments any other discussion for members of council Mr Callan Mr coun I I don't I wasn't on Council when the um when the adus were brought up so can you where did the where did this come from within the city was it something that uh people asked us to do did it come from Lehi or was it internal so uh adus were a recommendation that came out of our comprehensive housing strategy and the comprehensive housing strategy was developed with you know very robust Community engagement um not just with you know residents um I think over 3,500 residents were surveyed and and contributed to those recommendations we also had individual um uh stakeholder sessions and then the housing committee uh the housing steer committee that remains active as you know we hold our quarterly updates they were all involved in evaluating different strategies one of which was adus um adus are um you know they're they're a very popular topic of conversation right now Nationwide um when we're talking about affordable housing and as I mentioned you know in California and and on the west coast they gained popularity early but now a lot of uh communities like ours are looking at adus as an option so certainly it was going to be one of the options on the table um that we were looking at in developing the housing strategy and we floated that option past um the stakeholder groups and also the the housing committee um and it it it very much Rose to the top not just with the support of Lehi and Community Action but um you know a number of our other partners on on the housing um committee but you know I'll also say that you know as I mentioned a large part of this research component um both the research that Lehi is doing and then also you know the work that we're collectively doing around um the zoning will involve additional Community engagement specific to accessory dwelling units you know in neighborhoods where you know they they could be supported um and all of that would go into drafting um you know recommendations for potential zoning changes and I would just add to miss Collins this strategy is not a new strategy it's bringing it back to the city of Bethlehem because we probably have and I forget what the number is 500 600 700 adus now that predate the modern zoning code so if you look at different parts of South Bethlehem from Center City there adus that exist now that just were grandfathered in when the current zoning code was created and like the rewrite happened in like the 60s I think was the modern one so the idea of bringing back the Adu IDE aidea was just bringing it back so you didn't have to go to zoning hearing board but like in practice now we could go out and there's just like I said I forget what the exact number is that that we found that currently exist in the city but I think part of the reason why it had come um as a something that had popped up in different places was just because it was something that currently exists in certain parts of the city and I would just add that this study also helps and I think all of us have heard some of the sensitivity about doing anything with housing in neighborhoods like this study is one of the things that helps determine what's your minimum lot size what your setbacks are like those type of technical questions that are not ones that I think that we just want to say look this what works in other people with other areas we've gone to a lot of neighborhood meetings we have had a lot of neighborhood conversations people rightly have a lot of Pride about what it is Miss heler and things it's like you got to be careful because as we know when you set minimum lot sizes that determines in the future how many units you can build on and so on and so forth so it's kind of a technical uh it's a technical study that I don't think you want Lehi students doing either as far as like what's the minimum lot size that we want and those setbacks and those things that I've talked about before like whether or not you're in an RT Zone if it's 4,000 square feet can you build one unit or 12,000 acre things like that the the the 3500 people that were involved with the The Proposal you know that we talked to I guess in this housing study whatever were a major were were they from all over all areas of the city or from specifically one area or so so we went to different community events whether or not it was like Liberty football games or different areas of the city different open houses at different schools um so it was something that people responded to we had worked with the betham mar School District um so there was you know we made an effort and we're successful in getting people to respond to that both in on paper on the internet so from throughout from throughout the city so if I'm wrong correct me so okay uh the the adus the city's going to the city or this or this amount of money is I'm hearing $200,000 is going to be given to uh people that sign up to to have these adus and that money is I'm not saying it's 200 might be less but there's up to $200,000 that will be given to these residents to fix up a primarily garages right well it it depends whether or not it's a conversion or not but I would say any type of numbers and things like that are just conceptual and right now people know how they want these programs to work theoretically as far as affordability is concerned but not necessarily what and I think that's what Miss Collins was talking about what any type of incentive packages would look like and it's connected to the conversation we often have about how expensive it is to build that like if you want to affordable housing you need to subsidize it Developers you know it's the same conversation but exactly what those things would look like as far as policies going forward have not been determined yet other than what the concepts are if it makes sense which we still don't know if it does or not until after you look at the study because you got to go and look and if you remember and I've talked about this before when Miss heler had undertaken the zoning overhaul back in started in 2007 2008 I think we passed in 2012 um I mean that took a while to take a look at what all of our different neighborhoods are as far as zoning changes as far as changing what your square footage is in the lot size and so on and so forth and I'm saying it's a real possibility because you don't know until you study it that like the negatives associated with coming up with numbers here outweigh the positives nobody knows what that is yet because nobody's gone and actually studied what the type of zoning changes would that you would need to do you allow them in RG only do you allow them an RT do you allow them an RT with special exception do you allow them you know that that meet the different requirements off street parking until that research is done other than the concept that we think that there may be a possibility that potentially you could offer incentive package that makes makes them work on the affordability side that that's you just we don't nobody knows what the answers are to those questions yet so so hypothetically and I don't know where I read this I don't know if it if it was a uh City information or whatever if it was one of the meetings I was at but um the theory is to take a piece of a property on an existing property uh rehab it turn it into like a little apartment and for 10 years that individual cannot rent it out at market rate for period of 10 years I think it's like 30% of of of um what what's the 30% number that I read is that is that the affordable housing I mean is that the uh so um uh rent is considered affordable if you're paying you know 30% or less of your um take home gr take home right right so then at the end of the 10 years uh the owner of the property then gets to rent it out at market rate I mean the guidelines haven't been determined yet so it could be if you wanted to make it 20 years if you wanted to make it 15 years I mean those are the policy conversations that become the pluses and minuses about whether or not any type of public investment makes sense for any type of affordable housing or subsidized housing but we also don't know until we do more of the research and this program goes on whether or not there's been a lot of interest in people that are like I want to move like I'm not saying this literally but like my mom wants to move to an Adu behind the house and then her daughter and her daughter's husband and their son moves into their house and they're on the same property or you have the the Adu that's connected you just there's there's a million different options there that people just don't know and I think that whatever the numbers come down to like isn't determined yet but that would be a balancing act based on what incentives are available or grant money are available to whether or not we offer it and whether or not it's a program that's worth taking on as far as staff time and things like that I think and and Miss Collins you might know I think even in opening doors it suggests that even in five years if we had started this already or tomorrow or the zoning stuff be taken care of is like we only anticipated like 15 to 20 or something like that 15 to 30 15 to 30 units out of 35,000 housing units so they're not particularly easy to do but it is an idea that is what this is going forward with and that's why Lehi had applied for the grant because they had wanted to take a look at this and that's how we got that's how that's part of how we got pulled into this pulled into the situation I'll just add one point of clarification is there's there's sort of two different components right so there's there's a a component where um you know Lehi and Community Action are working together on a on a pilot program that is you know focused on you know actually subsidizing um some of those builds to ensure that they remain affordable and they're managed you know through Community Action and New Bethany um and and that's really a a partnership that's developing for a very finite number of units if you're looking at the zoning you know what that allows for that that does that's not necessarily combined with um uh you know subsidy or partnership or you know New Bethany managing the units or you know looking at low-income residents right th that's a finite sort of pilot over here that you know kind of Lehi is working on with their funding but if you look at zoning generally what you're doing then is potentially opening up for you know as the mayor mentioned you know somebody who um maybe is Aging in place and you know wants to have a caregiver you know living in a in a back unit or they want to move into an accessory dwelling unit and rent out their home you know that's totally separate from a community action or a new Bethany program that's just allowing a typical resident who wants to have this uh additional sort of option and that's one of the things we we really did hear a lot in um you know the work that we did in developing opening doors is just having those additional types of options um it could be very beneficial right and I think that's in particular particular what AARP tends to support as well um because we're seeing in a lot of communities particularly for aging folks this sort of option being allowed by zoning um it can be really beneficial and so you know what we might look at is you know as Council km Smith mentioned is what are other ways we can incentivize that that might be um expedited permitting processes um or or other things that maybe help reduce the cost for an average person who wants to convert their their their garage um and so all of that is part of you know the work that we're doing with this zoning study as well is how do you build a full package in zoning um that that doesn't necessarily you know put a ton of money towards it or you know have as I mentioned New Bethany or Community Action like managing units but how do we just create like natural incentives in in the zoning code or um you know with other processes on our end as a city that make an average person able to kind of do this kind of work in benefit from it but also guard against what I think people often get worried about is what zoning changes mean for their neighborhood and part of the sensitivity of doing all of this research and making sure you get the technicalities right is that we've seen before developers will look at zoning as like how can I get around this how can I utilize they're not thinking about it always the same way misser thought about it so it is a situation that like we want to be sensitive about that which is why some of that expertise is obviously needs needs to go outside and I would just make one comment Mr C and then then I'll turn it back to you there is that like this idea though of hiring people outside like I had Mr Evans run a list of all the professional service contracts we've run over the last like three and a half years and I know this wasn't your comment Mr Ken but it just I wanted to say this before it's like we've had hundreds and hundreds all of you voted on one in 10A with scant tech infom Management Solutions and you're going to vote on one with 10c as far as water utility Council for work that Mr Spur's not going to do and his Department's not going to do and we approve these Professional Services contracts for hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mr busal and Mr alcohol on a regular basis and the conversation is just different about whether or not we can do this work in house or not and the $200,000 that we used based on what our Five-Year Plan is is 1.8% of the $ 11 million like 1.8 % that we use to be able to plan about how to spend the rest of our money effectively and I just think it's important because we use professional service contracts all the time we vote on them all the time and nobody ever says things to Mr busol or Mr alol or somebody else about can we do this can we do this in a different way sometimes we're even encouraged to do more things out whether not it's Paving or whatever might be but this $200,000 we've been able to mobilize into Choice neighborhoods $500,000 our Pro housing application that we have out there I'm sure miss Collins knows all of them off the top of her head but those Investments That Council has made has allowed us to be able to leverage more dollars into the future for under 2% of what our overall fiveyear housing plan is I'm sorry I'm sorry Mr K I know that was your question I apologize and I want to let everybody finish you know and so that's why I'm not interrupting anymore and I hope everybody appreciates that but um whove Turned a new Leaf no I'm trying the thing that I the thing that I that uh concerns me is this spot zoning as you know is illegal so we can't go in and say okay this house this house this house we got to Zone we got to rezone change the Zoning for blocks of areas if we decide to do this if we decide to do it if we change the zoning that then allows not only someone who has a garage in the back of a of a big house because I don't how did we start on the west side I mean how H how did we decide to start this whole concept on the West Side versus yeah a couple reasons in in particular because um like alley houses are a very traditional housing type already on the West Side um you know as the mayor mentioned I think Dr K Beck pulley looked Citywide at where um adus and and Alley houses already exist and the west side has you know seen them throughout the entire neighborhood without um negative impact on the character of the neighborhood um and then you look at somewhere like the southide for example that also has similar types of units but is already extremely dense um and so you know the Southside was sort of discounted as a pilot for that reason um you know for adding like too much additional density and you know thin alleys and things but you know the west side it's as I mentioned it's already a traditional housing type um there are some you know lots that I think could accommodate it um we looked at Water and Sewer lines um so there are a couple different factors so so Mike Mr R you you and I both know individuals very well many of them that are experts in the zoning in our city and use it to their benefit and my concern is that we change the zoning because we can't do spot zoning if we change the zoning not only are these little garages going to be turned into adus but also um the possibility of new construction adus in the back of these homes so I I would say both that's part of what the point was I made before about the sensitivity of this so the idea you don't want to just basically say anybody can put something anywhere in their backyard which is why our zoning code now is relyant on what those numbers are if it's RG or RT or RS to be able to put different things in there and if you've read the zoning code and the only individual I know that knows it better than I do is Miss heler if you read it what you see is the incredible amount and I think you were at the meeting out at Wesley Methodist when I referen what the lot sizes were in the neighborhood around Becca and how every single one of those homes was you remember that conversation so like they were designed in a way that if somebody bought one of those homes based on what the acre size was unless they bought nextd door homes and they consolidate which is American it's hard to do you can't necessarily build more than a single family home there because of what the lot size is with that being said as a concept if somebody to consider if I want my mom to live in a house behind me on what's an allowable thing like that's something that currently a lot of people want to consider as far as it as far as it it's concerned so it is part of the whole conversation what developers could do what families could do what intergenerational families could do what subsid subsidies could do and things like that but you but I think we're agreeing a lot on what the sensitivity is that you don't want to just allow things anywhere which is why our zoning code has so many and I'll give you one example is that things can be allowed by special exception so the idea that like in a zoning area you're allowed to do this P particular use but these are the requirements you need and by special exception so you got to go to the zoning hearing board to be able to do that so then they're able to say up or down based on whether it meets the special exception criteria that people spent all this time looking for so your question is a good one we just don't know what those answers are or I would even agree with you admit like we don't know what the guard rails are by at the end of the day you look at this in the positive that way the negatives I would just add that one specific consideration communities look at you know that we could look at to see if it's feasible in in Pennsylvania is just to write into the zoning that um you know there has to be one of the either the main unit or the Adu has to be like owner owner OCC like the property owner has to live in one of the two of them so that you avoid a situation where investors are coming in and purchasing multiple properties and building multiple adus um so it would you know require that you know the owner of the the parcel of land would have to live on that parcel of land yeah I you know I um I I voted against uh I vote I voted for a lot of studies um in in the nine years that I'm on Council and I don't think I've ever vote I I voted against one I think in all that time that was for the $100,000 that we spent uh which I thought at that time was a waste of money uh on the feasibility study of the walking pedestrian bridge over to Lehi which I think at the time I was the only one that voted against against it and I had some people that were pissed off at me about it because but I knew the situation over there and I knew nor fork Southern has the uh the right away over the uh the air rates over the the train tracks and I said back then I thought it was a waste of money and I think all these years later there's nothing moving on with that um and I think it was $100,000 hours that we just washed down the drain and I think uh asking a company who is an expert or all they one of the things that they you do all the time is adus I don't think they're going to come back to us and tell us anything that we don't want that that that we don't want to hear I most people that do studies where do you want to go with this and then they're going to find a way to manipulate the study into do into otherwise if they if people come back uh doing studies all time and negative or the opposite and polar opposite of what the city wanted then they're never getting hired again I mean that that's my opinion I'm not I'm not saying that's the facts that's my my opinion so I'm going to be voting no against this because I think it's a very dangerous slope that if we start changing the zoning on the west side and other parts of the city I think that when you know if it's a onesie twz thing I I don't think too many people going to be upset about it but what I think when residents of the city find out that the zoning is being changed and there's uh possibil I'm not you know we can definitely put in there that it has to be a relative but I I I honestly think what's going to happen is there going to be non relatives living in these little adus in back of and the density of our our our neighborhoods and we all we all agree our neighborhoods all of our neighborhoods the southide West Side North Side they're all special places for everybody to live and I think the West you know the people live on the west side and and the people people live over in in in Mount Ary and people live over in in edgeboro those people um in Rosemont and uh those people decided to live there because they wanted that type of a neighborhood and I just think uh the possibility of changing the zoning uh anywhere in the city uh as far as residential uh single family homes is a slippery slope that I do not want to go down and I honestly think that when the residents of the city find out about it they will not want to go down either that that's just my opinion I'm not saying that's uh factual but um I've been around here a long time and uh I grew up here as all of you did and um I think our neighborhoods are are are the strongest things that uh make bethem Bethlehem and I don't want to change that I don't even want to study to tell me that uh they're thinking about changing it or they think it's a good idea because I anytime we're talking about changing zoning it's a very dangerous slope as Mr Reynold says and we can't spot and I know um there's always little loopholes for every but every little developer and I I'm not talking big-time developers I'm talking people that come in and buy uh uh properties up and and this is what's going on in the city right now a house goes on a market these people with money are going in buying them gutting them fixing them up which is the right and then they're renting them at really exorbitant prices and you're going to find in 10 years 10 more years years of this because we've already had about 15 20 years of it in another 10 years of that type of thing going on betham is going to be become even more unaffordable for people very much more because people want to live one of the thing is is is the nicer that we become the more people want to move here and that's going to drive up um the cost of everything and you know again I just think that uh it's not going to be a good thing for the city and that's why I'll be voting against it I I wish everybody luck on it who's who's working on it but that's just my personal opinion so thank you thank you Mr Callan I'll open it up to discussion councilwoman Le I think uh this conversation in the past several minutes has shown that it is a complex issue that deserves uh some prioritization and research so that we can make responsible choices um about whether we make changes or do not make changes because all we have right now is proposals right and ideas and Concepts um so I think that spending a small percentage to do further research before making any changes is responsible uh fiscally and in terms of thinking about the character of our neighborhoods so um I appreciate that there's effort going into getting as much information as we can before any actual uh proposed changes come before us thank you any other discussion C Leo so with the the thing that's in in front of us um can you tell me a little bit more about what they'll be studying um I remember that for the most of this grant we were literally just a pass through and this was to make sure that someone who actually understood zoning was dealing with the zoning component of it but not actual any zoning amendments so what are we voting on right now so but actually to clarify it's not just a recommendation of whether or not to do adus I mean we looked at that in large part in you know the the opening doors plan but you know the components of this include community and stakeholder engagement um actually drafting potential zoning updates right that doesn't mean that we have to propose them but like it is actually drafting the the text of the zoning Amendment and I'll point out that um when we do these types of potential larger or comprehensive zoning changes um and when we've done them in the past we've always used a consultant so if anybody was around for the student housing overlay for example um you know that kind of work is always you know led by the the director of Planning and Zoning but we've you know routinely used um you know third parties to actually you know do the drafting um and then this work would also include you know building recommendations for like the technical assistance and affordability strategies that I was talking about so um and and that go to um Council kmy Smith's Point like how do other communities build into their actual zoning ordinance um you know mechanisms that make a a a project like this more financially feasible so it's it's a very like detailed list of like Financial or technical assistance programs that could either you know be built into the zoning or a component of it to make a program successful moving forward um you know there'd be a technical memo documenting like the key takeaways and the findings and there'd be like a detailed sort of description of how you would evaluate um you know the different components of the zoning with the the technical and financial assistance pieces as well thank you for bringing up the student housing overly because I that's I was going to ask about that it's my understanding that one of the the last things that we changed zoning wise was the student housing overlay and we had contracted portions of that out to make sure that it was crafted in a way that it wasn't going to be challenged and as of now it has held the the spread and I've been able to call uh Mr Simonson every time I've seen another thing pop up and say hey this is two feet outside of the student housing overlay and that has been able to really re that back because the zoning was drafted by someone who specializes in zoning and on the Woodward and Associates um website they have quite a bit of of text documents about how they have assisted local municipalities with specifically their their zoning and ensuring that their zoning is right but that's again that's not what we're voting on right now this is just the preliminary studies so all of the everything that I just described is included as a deliverable of this of this study yes okay um I I've been to quite a few of these these Adu meetings and I said this at the meetings I'm supportive of adus in South Bethlehem because I I live on the street where the adus were studied in South Bethlehem I know how well it works in South Bethlehem it's been very helpful it's it's provided us the most affordable housing there's a unit on the Alley behind me that rents it's a two-bedroom two bath it rents for 950 you can't get that anywhere like not in Bethlehem excuse me um but that doesn't mean that adus work everywhere I know they work in my community because I live in my community and I see work in my community I don't know if they work anywhere else and as a council person I don't want to make a decision based on I feel like it's not going to be good there I want to know if we have a way to find data that shows that it's going to be good or it's not going to be good I feel like we have a responsibility at least try and figure out from a factual purpose like from a factual point will this be something that we can do but this doesn't commit us to anything right at any point we could just be like no this isn't this isn't something that is beneficial for us of course okay right thank you any other discussion from members of council turn it back over Council woman KY Smith um I'm just wondering because I know like I said it's not that I'm for or against adus but I know where I had lived before there was a a home that had a wonderful in-law apartment and it's probably was there like 40 50 years um do we have any information on how it was handled in the past when someone wanted to do an Adu or an in-law apartment or whatever in the city do we have information on how it was handled then I I don't know you know when zoning changed to not allow them but like for if somebody it's come up multiple times if somebody comes to us now and says I want to build an in-law site like the zoning really doesn't allow for that currently I don't know how it was treated in so right now it doesn't allow for in any of the zoning areas I don't believe so I don't care I don't think so but you can't you'd have to go to like zoning hearing board and ask for like a variance and don't know the last time they would have granted one of those variances but if like you wanted to do it in your house like that's the process of the zoning doesn't allow for it you go I don't know the last time the zoning hearing board has said yes to one of those I don't have that knowledge but that that's the process that you would follow like right now if somebody wanted to do it okay and we don't know how it worked in the past if they need a variance or if they were just able to do it so in general a lot of things in the city didn't need Varian is because there wasn't really a zoning code when a lot of things were built and the zoning code if you look at at the way it's kind of like been built on in the last like six different versions or whatever going back to like our first one which was done like a hundred years ago is it was very very general I like to say like our zoning code of the 20s looks like Township's zoning codes of the 2020s and that's a dig at them is and that's why you're getting these warehouses and everything like that like that's a lot of what we had a hundred years ago and like we worked through that to become more and more restrictive and the zoning code got longer and longer and longer to be able to take into account a lot of the different sensitivities we have about the neighborhoods do you have alleys do you have neighborhood you know houses that back up against each other and things like that okay all right the other the other question I have is so for the Lehi I my understanding and and correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that the project with Lehi was going to be a pilot project and we were going to you know develop like three adus or whatever and then based on that evaluate it like any pilot project and see if we should go further with to use like is that where we're at with that or is that not correct so there was there was one pilot project that was approved by the zoning hearing board for a variance um and and that is the project that we're considering to be informative as a component of this work and by this work I'm talking more broadly about um you know not just the zoning piece but the work that Lehi is doing you know all of it together so that pilot project you know will certainly inform this work and kind of be working on a parallel track but we wouldn't our goal is not to send multiple pilot projects to the zoning hearing board for a variance our goal is to you know the one received approval to use that and learn from it and and incorporate that into potential zoning changes or not and I've said that I don't think it's a good idea either even though Lehi Grant has the money to do more than that as far as more projects is concerned I don't think it's good until this research is done that it is a situation by which they try to utilize those dollars to go back to the zoning hearing board to do a second or a third one even though they have the money for it I think it's better for the long-term health of this conversation and the sensitivity of it that this part of it is done first before that anything else goes on there okay I guess that's why I was confused because I thought it was considered a pilot project typical pilot project where we do it evaluate it and then go from there but um I guess I was wrong um the only other thing I have to say is again um not that I'm against adus or you know but I just have concern because I I look at like the AARP motto and they even include sizes and density and it's very thorough and I just hate to see money being spent um where the information might already be there and again I looked three times on the website on Wood song they may be the best but I don't see anything that says to me that they're going to be the best if they're the experts in adus because I don't see anything and I felt the same way about the um the per the same organization that did the um the affordable housing study I I knew other people that were really experts that I think could have done a better job so um that being the case I'm just not going to support it just because of the the consultant aspect the money being spent on Research that I think could be done otherwise and not knowing that this is the best um consultant for the job thank you any other discussion for members of council before we call the vote uh just briefly a lot of my you you had something go ahead I was curious if if we say no what happens with this money does it just go back to Lehi yeah I mean they probably there's some other work around that's probably done to have somebody go and take a look at what this work is if they want to do it because they have the grant but I mean this like we are here because this is what they wanted to do with their particular their particular dollars and and and also you know when we're thinking about zoning it it is important I think and it should be important to everybody that the city's Planning and Zoning Bureau is an integral part of that process like the Lehi could the money could go back to Lehi they could hire this group and manage the consultant but then that puts us a step away from it and so that takes us as a city out of the role of of really being the most Hands-On when it comes to our zoning I guess that that was kind of the my thought process here because I I believe that they would continue to hire Wood song Wood song consulted in not not just the the missing middle but the affordable city um as well as that one strong towns book so if if we just sent the money back to Lehi Lehi could engage with whatever consultant they want and then come to to City Hall and say this is still the zoning that we would want to engage in and if we as a city wanted to do that we would then have to just either believe what lehi's consultant is saying or put our zoning office through the process of vetting what they're doing yeah okay and and and just part of this is done out of respect for Miss heler and our planning and zoning and people like living in the city of Bethlehem because we get this right and we have traditionally gotten this right and Miss Collins is correct that if like we're not involved now and they come back with other recommendations then you got to go take a look at it and as I've often said time is our biggest problem around around here so it just adds a lot of time to and we've said this like we're talking about in that opening doors and and it's always amazes me the parts that people want to believe about that versus the parts they don't want to believe is like 15 to 30 units out of like 35,000 units so if you're spending hundreds of hours on whether or not this thing works for 15 to 30 units which is what we was the kind of likelihood of this happening that's at some point just not a good use of time with everything else that those same people could be working at and I would just take this opportunity to say Mr Callan to your point about them writing a recommendation like we don't ever take anything that somebody says and says like well that's what you know thanks for saying what we want to believe I think probably to a fault we always feel like we need to explain intellectually where we come from and why we believe something why we don't and it is a daily basis by which Mr spurk and I have disagreements or Miss Collins and I have disagreements or comes back with information and we're like we don't think that is accurate or not I understand that may be the way that other people do it in other places but one thing if people agree with us disagree with us like we don't mind disagreeing with things that people come back and I mean we talked about that a little bit with opening doors things that were in opening door strategies that were like part of the community survey and if you ask me like I don't know if that's really going to work at the end of the day so like we don't mind having those particular like intellectual disagreements all this is doing is seeing like what is possible or not possible so if we decide that you want to have them on a certain piece of land on a certain how many places are able to do that out of our out you know using our GIS map right now 200 100 150 we don't know what that is this is about setting that standard and setting like the question whether or not we even go through that process about public hearings and all those different types of things just to give you some kind of background there thank you councilwoman Leon you're good I will councilwoman quch yes thank you um so when we had this come up recently um there was another thing that came up and one of them the money was going from us to them and one of them the money was going from them to from Lehi to us and this is the one where it's going from Lehi to us correct both okay it is a little of both okay um and you know I I have asked the solicitor about uh the you know I have AED on the side of caution in recusing myself in a lot of circumstances in which she has said you know you don't really have to kind of thing and in this case I he what I'm hearing from the city is that again what what uh you know vice president Leon uh brought up which is that if this fails Lehi goes out on its own does its own work we may not be part of it it could be because it's the small City's lab so they're looking at small cities across the country we may not benefit from this at all and it's not our money I mean some of it is our money but but there's you know this large portion that is Lehi and um you know what I'm also Hearing in the opposition and not I'm just again like sometimes I say something and people think I'm talking about them whatever um some of the opposition to this that I'm hearing not from everybody but from some people um is sounds like an opposition to doing anything at all and my concern about that is that we all agree there's a problem and if we keep saying okay well we're going to continue to investigate Solutions and then you come back and say well no not that solution well no not that solution well no not that solution we're not going to get anywhere with this problem um and again you know there yes there are times when uh we approve uh you know consultants for all manner of things and it's as you said a very very tiny um percentage of the overall spend on trying to attack this problem so with all of these considerations in mind and you know considering that this could uh fail and then we would lose out on the chance to benefit from um some of this research uh happening for for us for for the city of Bethlehem I am going to with withdraw my recusal and uh I will be voting on this matter thank you understood any other discussion as it relates to the resolution well yes uh do I I I understand that it's that a withdrawal of a recusal from an employee of Lea University is appropriate is an appropriate action turn to our solicitor pursuant to section three subsections A and B of year 2022 d24 conflict of interest ordinance um members of Bethlehem city council shall not vote on matters in which they have a financial interest so it's a personal financial interest okay is the procus and so the money that is happen that is changing hands is not going to either us on a personal level I mean I've tended to recuse myself on any matter related to Lehi on the on the theory that it could potentially in some way benefit me personally but in this case there's really no this money doesn't touch my hands at all so I'm I'm comfortable it's it's a personal decision and I I respect you whatever you decide k no I with with with the solicitors uh commentary um I am comfortable making that decision as well so I will also withdraw my recusal um I I'm going to interrupt and just ask our solicitor in just explicit terms do do you think that this meets the test to to recuse or I do I do um I think that the language of the ordinance is very explicit it says that council members may not vote on matters in which they have a financial interest that is the preclusion I know that council members have aired on the side of caution when um matters have come up involving things that they may be involved with in some way um in this instance we have two council members who are employed by leeh high University and this particular resolution does not lead to a benefit specifically to to them as employees of Lehigh University so you in plain English it's appropriate for them to vote on it that is yes understood just to cut through that councilman well home did you have something else you want have um no I I have nothing new to add I will just say just you know it's no I I will not I will not make any additional comments I will note we're approaching an hour in this agenda item Mr Callan um I I I wasn't on I don't think I was on Council when the when the that um um got passed but wasn't there something in there that also in appearance of a conflict M St let me just I I mean I I don't have any problem with them recusing I'm just wondering it if in the future for myself um at what point I mean if I'm getting a paycheck from uh person X or company X and there's an item on the agenda that you're voting on I would think that i' I mean I would just think that that would be an appearance of a conflict and I thought I thought there was something in there about an appearance of a conflict defines excuse me application of a financial interest what that includes that's campaign contributions um this particular ordinance and I'm looking at it right now because I I know that we've discussed appearance of conflict and in the um state law which is very very similar it it may be in there um but again the conflict has to be personal and like getting a paycheck I'm asking a question is getting a pay truly if no like getting campaign contribution I will ask all members of council from left to right to let Miss Stewart give her opinion formulate it I believe Char already gave an opinion if you want to hold true to that opinion Miss Stewart or take another Minutes review whatever you want to review but I I believe attorney Stewart already gave her opinion we could start litigating that on the floor of council I don't open I'm not open to that discussion to to be very Frank with everyone I mean I I have faith in attorney Stewart and as I use the term plain English I just looking for a yes or no from our solicitor as it relates that we could start nitpicking it just like we do just like we are the agenda item but if attorney Stewart is confident in her opinion whatever it is then I'm comfortable moving forward and council members are free to choose how they how they act as it relates to voting a financial interest does not include a paycheck in includes campaign contributions director indirect investment or ownership interest in any business property Etc um 10% or greater that would be benefited by uh the vote and that and taxes no we're not we're not entertaining commentary from the public I I don't mean to be rude but again I just want to continue on with the agenda item so again I'll ask attorney Stewart If you does your opinion still stand it does understood disclosure was there anything new anyone wanted to add to the discussion before we call the role councilwoman Leo this is my third time speaking I I I got hash marks here okay cool I just I just had a a question about the ethics um if I'm reading this and we we don't mandate recusal one way or another we mandate disclosure that that was my understanding that is accurate so even if if the if it's just a disclosure regardless of if it's campaign contributions paychecks whatever it's the the disclosure is mandated not the recusal well no I'm sorry I I I will take a step back from that and say no the ordinance does preclude U members of council from voting on matters in which they have a financial interest so yes it is it is preclusive but you have to have a financial interest and it defines Financial interest and being an employee of Lehigh University in this scenario would not violate um the financial interest component thank you for the clarification anything new anyone wants to add to the discussion I'm S I I I can't help but observe that this topic was not brought up earlier this evening when a one of our colleagues was appointed to a board that's all and I'll just to and I'm not opening it up to conversation but again I'll just note the financial interest component of of any ordinance as it stands so I don't just like the solicitor said this doesn't meet that test I would say the same rationale applies to earlier any other discussion I just councilwoman ksey Smith I I just like to address that when I saw that I was going to be reappointed which I didn't realize the time was up I did think of um taking my name off but then I saw and remembered that it since it was a council created board and the mayor at that time wanted a council representative to be on the board and since it's a board that meets once a year for literally five minutes and it is a valuable board and given my 40 Years of mental health um experience I thought no I will stay on so so if someone feels this a conflict of interest they can certainly bring it up and I can certainly take myself off I would say we're not going to go backwards on the agenda in terms of discussion is there anyone who hasn't spoken three times yet who wants to add something new to the conversation uh I'm G to give uh my opinion and then we're going to have the vote the I will be supporting this tonight so with all that discussion and around it I will be supporting it and very simple terms I think that when we're looking at something like this three important phases planning implementation evaluation right now we're in the planning phase money was awarded to Lehigh University Lehigh University is trusting the city to be this Hub as we should be it should be centralized just like we have conversations around homelessness and things like that I think all these conversations should be happening at City Hall and bringing everyone into City Hall whether it's Contracting uh people in the related fields whether it's uh Community Partners other stakeholders whoever it would be I I think it's good practice for us to be at the center of that this allows us to be at the center of that we're not exhausting any general fund dollars I do recognize that there is grant funding that is um it we're partnered up with some of us coming through Lehigh and then you have the fair Grant and everything like that um I do appreciate that in the scope gr of the work that's done there is a community outreach component that's very explicitly drawn out there as we talk about kind of what that would look like and what those options are as it relates to adus previous members of council who no longer serve on Council and members of the public had talked to me about adus I want to say even maybe before covid like this isn't something new this is also not a Magic Bullet as we talk about affordable housing and and implementation strategies and doing this and doing that it's all comprehensive I I've used the example before about a light switch nothing's you know lights on lights off everything is like baking a cake you have a little bit of this a little bit of that adus is a component to to what we're trying to do and as was brought up before none of this binds us to anything uh we talk about adus all over the city I have a couple in my neighborhood somebody a few houses away from me has a garage that they turned into uh an Adu and then there's uh one two streets over that even before this conversation my wife and I noticed I went hey that's nice for whatever reason whether it was to rent it out whether it was to move uh an aging parent in there but it serves a lot of purposes and to councilwoman Leon's Point earlier um typically affordable and and provides you know helps with housing stability so so that is my two cents in that I will again recognize that most people spoken three times so as per our Council rules Mr Callan I'm going to I see your hand up but again you do you have something very brief that you want to add Mr Callan I I do and it's not it's not I'm not speaking a third time on on uh no no we're on the agenda item that you're speaking on I had Mr cand please go with your brief comments I I just had a quick question the 15 or 30 adus that are on the on the books is being thought about where are they going are there there specific area in the city it was just an estimate based on a lot of assumptions if there was moving forward with any type of zoning changes that would allow from it from a market point of view just like a guess based on percentage of land and other places that you're able to do this based on if you want to put them in alleys and things like that the point of the 15 to3 wasn't 15 to3 or 14 to 29 or 16 to 31 was the idea that this is not a strategy that provides a lot of units that provide small amounts I mean we obviously have apartment buildings that are going to open up that have 30 40 50 units more than an entire program would look like it was just the type of estimate if somebody like looks at it it's like huh I wonder how popular this will be or how financially feasible this will be it that was kind of the expectation referencing about how difficult it is to be able to do one of these so all 15 or 30 wouldn't end up being necessarily on the west side it could be in other areas of his City it could be wherever the zoning allows for them to happen so if you look at our zoning code and you decided to do this only in RT or only in RG theoretically if the lot sizes and I'm not trying to be like you know sarcastic about this but this is why you need to do the study so we can see out of the thousands of parcels of land we have in the city how many of them necessarily would fit this if we decided to put certain requirements on them but we we don't know that yet Mr Miller call the rooll Miss willhelm I Callahan nay Miss kmy Smith nay miss quch I miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I passes 52 10 C be resolved by the Council of the city of Bethlehem that the mayor and controller and where such other City officials is deemed appropriate by the city solicitor are hereby authorized to execute an agreement agement with mcnees Wallace and NK LLC to represent the city involving water utility Regulatory and transactional matters in representation for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission resolution is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmsy Smith discussion we'll call rooll M Wilhelm I Mr Callan nay or no I I I miss kmy Smith I miss quch I Miss lard I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I passes 70 I believe 10d be it resolved by the Council of the city of Bethlehem the mayor and controller are authorized and directed to execute all application forms necessary to apply for a local Share account Grant through the Pennsylvania Commonwealth financing Authority for funds to support the 2025 Celtic classic Highland Games and Festival we had further resolved that the mayor and controller are authorized to execute such other agreements and documents as are deemed to be necessary and or related theto the resolution is sponsored by Miss wilh and Miss kmy Smith discussion councilwoman qu briefly um I'm sorry uh so we've I mean i' I haven't looked at their books or anything like that but it seems that um the Celtic cultural Alliance and and and the Celtic classic continually struggles financially and I'm wondering so this is obviously a request for a grant uh which would be a one-time Grant of $160,000 um is there a particular purpose to this grant other than um operating funds to kind of keep them going and if it is for operating funds uh is there some kind of long-term plan to get Celtic cultural Alliance onto a more stable Financial footing well I can't speak to their own kind of internal conversations I think we had kind of helped to step up with the parade that we had helped to support and things like that this is on here at the request of Senator basca I mean the LSA Grant is a state program uh it was something that she had had conversations with them about that wanted us to put the resolution in there for this um so that's where that's where this came from um but I would say that I I believe that they're always having conversations about what the best you know Festival looks like for them but I don't want to speak for them other than just to say that we obviously value what they bring to the city and that's why we had done the parade last year and it certainly super successful um but beyond that this that was kind of where this kind of where this came from at Senator bus's request thank you and I it didn't mean to cast aspersions in any way it is one of my absolute favorite weekends of the year it was actually the weekend we moved here and I had my five-month-old infant and our moving truck didn't come and we had nothing to sleep on and I had to find a hotel room and I got the last room at the Comfort Suites it was like moving into Bethlehem with my infant last room in in the city uh and and I was like what is going on and somebody said oh it's Celtic Fest it's just an amazing thing and true to their words it was you know it's something every year we look forward to so I I say it from love that I am just concerned um you know that if we and and I think you know yes hope hopefully this comes through and thank you senator bucola for sort of initiating it I just I have that concern that you know if there's some way to get them on a on a stable path I would really want to see that happen so thank you any other discussion about the resolution we'll call a rooll Miss wilh I Mr Callahan uh Miss grmy Smith I miss quch i m lard I miss Leon I and Mr cologne I pass 70 10e certificate of appropriateness under the provisions of the act of Pennsylvania legislature Bethlehem resolution is hereby granted for 346 West Street to demolish a 1960s concrete block garage structure and existing enclosed rear porch and construct a new addition at the rear of the home resolution is sponsored by Miss wih home and Miss grmy Smith discussion call Miss Wilhelm hi M Callahan hi Miss grmy Smith hi m quch i lard Leon I Mr colum I pass 70 and our last CH item tenna certificate of appropriateness under the provisions of the act of the Pennsylvania legislature Bethlehem resolution is hereby granted for 131 East Church Street to construct a 5 foot high brick wall in front of the home resolution is sponsored by Miss Wilhelm and Miss kmy Smith discussion call the rooll Miss Wilhelm I Callahan I miss grmy Smith hi miss quch I miss lard hi Miss Leon hi and Mr cologne I pass 70 that wraps up tonight's agenda get home safe everyone hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving [Music]