Allentown Mayor Trying To Shakedown The School Board?

Allentown school board member Bob Smith Jr. posted the following on his Facebook page Wednesday night (09/09/2015)
"I have been a school board director for 12 years. President of the board the last 4 years. And I have always worked hard for the tax payers of Allentown. Today I had a meeting with the mayor, city solicitor, assistant chief, city council president ,superintendent of Asd and school solicitor.The mayor wanted the school district to take over crossing guards and pay half the costs.

They showed a statute that says school district must pay half if no other agreement could be reached. I heard too much talk about the school district taking over and said the school district will not take this over as this is public safety. This should be handled by the city not the school district. We would contribute toward costs but we do not know what we are getting from the state and I would need to talk to the whole board as well. Not to mention we already voted on our current budget. Mayor wanted us to open our budget.

Then it happened, everything about pay to play came to my mind but in this case pay or lose your SRO officers in our school buildings. The mayor said if we did not pay he would pull all Sro officers from our school buildings. I blew my top and said do not threaten me or the school district. This was blackmail, a threat, strong arming and bullying. I will not be blackmailed, strong armed or bullied into making any deal that hurts our taxpayers, students or our staff.

We offered 100,000. To start work on a plan to help hire crossing guards. We would need to wait and see what our state funding is and time to talk to the whole board on this. The mayor rejected this good faith offer,

I'm very disappointed in him today. Now I see what contractors must have gone through. The mayor also threatened to sue us. We will continue to work with the city and help where we can but if the mayor wants to fight and blackmail us on the safety of our students and staff that is a fight I will gladly take defending with all my being to protect our students, teachers and all our taxpayers.

I think we need to ask where all that money for water went that the city budget is so tight.

I do not work for the mayor and he threatened the wrong person today. I will continue to defend the taxpayers and will not be bullied, blackmailed or threatened by him or anybody else. I post this so the public knows the truth. The school district will work together with the city despite what happened today but will not take over the crossing guards and will pay something we can afford not what the mayor demands."
LVCI: [I reedited into paragraphs for easier reading w/o changing any of his words]


In My Opinion
Shouldn't the restaurants, the arena and offices also be approached by the mayor?
Shouldn't he first come before council and the public making it a matter of public record?
Is shifting of the tax burdens off his city's books and onto the school district's an attempt to make himself look good?

In the long lost days back in the 60's we had cops on every corner downtown we no longer have. Hess's was never asked to pay for the one stationed at 9th & Hamilton. Neither were any other businesses on any of these corners. While we no longer require the street corner cops shouldn't those savings translate into crossing guards being paid 1/3 of what cops used to be?

Then there's that matter of the pay itself. The school district was willing to pick up the tab for $100,000. At around $9 an hour that would translate to about 11,111 hours. Even if each were needed 3 hours a day that works out to 3,703 assignments. Divide that by 180 student days and this would pay for over 20 crossing guards out of the 55 tha6 are needed.

If the mayor is complaining about the costs for officers in schools then I would suggest ASD hire a private security firm instead. The ASD simply can't afford what the mayor's charging.

There's another thing I want to add. The school district signed off on the NIZ with grand promises the tax on these new properties would be a tax cow for the district. How's that working out? I'd like to see the before NIZ and after NIZ figures in regards to how much more (or less) the school district is receiving from this same zone. Something which (as far as I know) has never been made public.

Seems to me if taxpayers forgo nearly a billion dollar$ in state tax revenues we ought to see taxes in Allentown going down, not up for both the city and the school district.
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