It was a standing-room-only crowd at the Aug. 11 Lehigh Township supervisors meeting as residents waited to discuss the open space land preservation item on the agenda. In the end, the preservation was voted down.<\/p>\n
Supervisor Janet Sheats began the discussion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI make a motion to not move forward with open space land preservation at this time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Supervisor Cindy Miller seconded the motion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to do this orderly,\u201d board Vice President Jerry Pritchard said. \u201cIf you want to speak, you will come up front, if you are able, state your name and address because this lady (pointing at township Manager Alice Rehrig) gives us the minutes, so we need to slow it down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pritchard ran the meeting because board President Mike Jones was absent due to a reported family emergency.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure the room has questions,\u201d Pritchard continued. \u201cThis is not a debate class. Please try your best to direct to us. We have exhausted many meetings on this. The public has the right to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to direct a question to the audience,\u201d Zach Szoke said. \u201cBy show of hands, how many people are for land preservation?\u201d<\/p>\n
About half of those in the room raised their hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, why are the people that are for this not allowed to vote? The supervisors are choosing to not let the residents vote,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
At previous meetings, Szoke advocated for the item as a ballot referendum.<\/p>\n
Szoke asked Pritchard, \u201cIf you believe everyone has the right to vote, why aren\u2019t you pushing the others to do the right thing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they have the right to vote their own way,\u201d Pritchard said.<\/p>\n
When Szoke asked Sheats why she changed her mind about preservation, she answered, \u201cBecause information on your PowerPoint was wrong. You said it would reduce crime, reduce money that is put into the fire company. That is not true.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are 10,000 people a year that go to the Blue Mountain,\u201d she continued. \u201cThey are not residents. We have three main routes through Lehigh Township. I did not know kids would be taxed also.\u201d<\/p>\n
Members of the audience yelled out, \u201cIf you don\u2019t like what\u2019s happening, vote them out of office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Someone else shouted, \u201cI tell you what is going on here; there is a conflict of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solicitor Dave Backenstoe said, \u201cZach, are you done? If so, please sit down. We need order in this meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
After another 15 minutes of arguing from the audience, Pritchard said to Sheats, \u201cWhat is your motion?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheats replied, \u201cI make a motion not to move forward with land preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller said, \u201cI second it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Voting favor of the motion were Dave Hess, Miller and Sheats. Pritchard voted no.<\/p>\n
Another item on the agenda regarded limiting residents to five minutes each during public comment.<\/p>\n
Szoke said, \u201cYou want to do this just because of land preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller disagreed, noting other municipalities also have time limits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to implement something,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe need to have order in our meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheats noted they tried to do it about four years ago.<\/p>\n
Pritchard said nothing has been decided.<\/p>\n
Sheats said, \u201cWe can take a look at my ideas and discuss next time. I will have attorney Backenstoe take a look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
PRESS PHOTO BY PATRICIA INGLESResidents turn out for the Lehigh Township supervisors meeting Aug. 11 that had open space land preservation on the agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a standing-room-only crowd at the Aug. 11 Lehigh Township supervisors meeting as residents waited to discuss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-272643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272643","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=272643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}