\u201cAnnual Action Plan for Fiscal Year 2026\u201d<\/a> outlines how to allocate the Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnership Grant and Emergency Solutions Grant.<\/p>\nInitially, the CDBG funding amount totaled more than $2.2 million, while HOME funds registered at $660,000 and ESG funds were at $198,000.<\/p>\n
A closer examination shows about $200,000 would be allocated to various service agencies, while about $765,000 will go to various municipalities for construction projects such as road, restroom and stormwater management.<\/p>\n
ArtsQuest seeks funding<\/p>\n
County Council approved a resolution to seek funding on behalf of ArtsQuest.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit group is seeking $350,000 from the Main Street Matters program grant. Should it receive the funding, ArtsQuest would “transform plaza spaces adjacent to the 150-year-old Bethlehem Steel Turn and Grind Shop and the Bethlehem’s Visitor’s Center into a multipurpose hub for public exhibitions and festivals.”<\/p>\n
This includes Musikfest and Christkindlmarkt festivals.<\/p>\n
Farmers market<\/p>\n
The legislative body approved a measure promoting a pilot program to benefit senior citizens.<\/p>\n
The bill encourages the Northampton County Area Agency on Aging to pursue a program with LANTA to utilize paratransit vans to shuttle individuals from Northampton County Senior Centers to producer-only farmers markets.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence<\/p>\n
Councilmember Jeff Warren provided a report on his recent excursion to the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania’s summer and annual conference. His comments involved the association’s technology committee discussions on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
“This ridiculously fast-moving technology is affecting counties, and it will affect counties from an adverse situation down the road,” Warren said.<\/p>\n
He indicated that during the committee discussion, Berks County officials said about 300,000 AI-based right-to-know request prompts had been filed.<\/p>\n
“This is something we’re going to have to deal with down the road,” Warren said. “We are living in a crazy world of AI…It was a sobering discussion.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. \u2013 Northampton County Council approved a plan to utilize 2026 federal housing and community development funds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[225,153,155,154,106597,110604,34376,110603,89597,4731],"class_list":["post-260894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-artsquest","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-community-development-block-grant","tag-emergency-solutions-grant","tag-grant-funding","tag-home-investment-partnership-grant","tag-main-street-matters-program","tag-northampton-county-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260894","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=260894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}