In response to the Sept. 28 Examiner article titled, “Change in Engineer Draws Ire of Sewer Committee Members,” I believe Allentown Mayor Greg Westfall is deliberately misleading the public for him and his friends to campaign on this year.
First, Mayor Westfall himself signed the contract that withheld Dewberry from processing the New Jersey sewer grant application, therefore there is no duplicity.
Second, “all six members of Borough Council” felt it necessary to remove this (grant application) function from Dewberry; not “some members” as Mayor Westfall was quoted as saying in the article. He needs to stop creating conspiracies. The reason the entire council removed this part was because Dewberry was contracting the work out to a third unknown party.
Dewberry was given an additional chance to provide their New Jersey grant application experience. Dewberry responded late and showed little understanding of what was required for the New Jersey grant application or who the third party was. The grant application was far too important to allow Dewberry to contract out to a third party who we do not know.
Regarding how much additional money was really spent, just prior to voting on which firm would file the grant application, Dewberry solicited through Mayor Westfall that they would complete part of the grant application for an additional $20,000, but no one other than the mayor saw what was covered in Dewberry’s new $20,000 quote. Dewberry’s new quote was not submitted to the clerk, as required by law.
Dewberry’s new cost quote was incomplete and they did not show that they were qualified to get the job, or who was doing the work. Mayor Westfall cannot compare the two bids and fairly conclude what he was quoted in the article.
By Mayor Westfall’s quotes in this article, he is destroying the confidence of our community’s faith in our town’s government. Our community is too small to fight the outside forces and simultaneously fight the forces within. We must all work together if we all truly want to afford living in Allentown.
Councilman Wil Borkowski
Allentown