ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday night to amend its 2026 capital fund budget to provide for an increase of $95,225 to the traffic signals upgrade expenditure account to allow for the emergency repair of two traffic signals.<\/p>\n
Director of Public Works Director Mark Shahda said the traffic signals at the intersections of Sixth\u00a0and Walnut streets and on Union Boulevard in front of Coca-Cola Park were knocked down from weather-related damage about three weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Shahda asked council to suspend its rules and approve the ordinance Wednesday night without having the normally required 14-day period following its introduction.<\/p>\n
Council suspended the rules, but questioned why it took three weeks for the request to be made.<\/p>\n
Shahda said the department had to go through its internal process in having a risk assessment of the claims to find the required funds.<\/p>\n
He explained that the funds were found in one of the capital accounts and will be transferred to allow the city to proceed with the repairs.<\/p>\n
By declaring an emergency situation, the city is exempt from having to go through the regular bidding process.<\/p>\n
Shahda said the bid process takes between six to eight weeks and that he doesn\u2019t feel comfortable waiting that long to award a bid.<\/p>\n
But even without that time for bidding, Shahda said the repairs could take a few months because of supply chain issues.<\/p>\n
Also Wednesday, Council President Santo Napoli announced several special upcoming council meetings:<\/p>\n
March 25 at 6:30 p.m. to consider the appointment of Frank Kane to the vacant position of managing director.<\/p>\n
April 8 at 6 p.m. to have a join meeting with the parking authority to discuss ongoing issues and concerns.<\/p>\n
April 22 at 6 p.m. to hold a discussion with the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone Development Authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday night to amend its 2026 capital fund budget to provide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,2748,121,51110,120,65151,51056,14932],"class_list":["post-142440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-city-council","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-neighborhood-improvement-zone-development-authority","tag-allentown-news","tag-frank-kane","tag-mark-shahda","tag-santo-napoli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}