Mayor responds to parking lot letter

Mayor Stuart Fierstein, Allentown
  I am responding to William Borkowski’s June 21 letter (“Too much time, cost for seven parking spaces”) where he calculated seven parking spaces as the extent of the proposed new municipal parking lot. In fact, what was presented at a recent public meeting was the Community Block Development Grant for submission for 2013. With the focus this year on ADA-qualified projects, it was the decision of Borough Council to resubmit for the Community Block Development Grant for the third year in a row for the Allentown Historic Streetscape Project.
   This project was a recommendation from the ad-hoc members as a result of the 4 p.m. public hearing on May 22. This was not the municipal parking plan.
   A component within the grant request applied to ADA accessibility of the proposed parking lot. That element of curb cuts, aprons, walkways, and handicapped parking were included within the application. This did not take 14-months to prepare at thousands of dollars of legal and engineering costs; but rather, it was approved by Borough Council on May 22, and prepared and submitted by the June 1 deadline with engineering costs of $1,713 and no legal costs.
   Mr. Borkowski, as the former managing partner for Owen Seeland, you know better than anyone just what that the property has to offer. The borough tried to negotiate with you for a few years, with no resolution, to acquire this land for parking. In fact, you reduced the property acquisition to half for downtown parking for municipal use and wanted the remaining portion of the property for a subdivision so that you could erect a 6,400 square-foot-building behind the Mueller and Swal properties. Even then, with only half of the parking, our net parking would have exceeded more than seven parking spaces.
   Why don’t you refer to those plans and documents in your possession from that time rather than attempt to manipulate public opinion with inaccurate information?
Stuart Fierstein, mayor
Borough of Allentown