ALLENTOWN, Pa. -One by one property owners shared their stories of financial hardship, lost jobs, hours cut, and just being flat out broke in Allentown, where even the mayor admits, poverty is the city’s biggest problem.But the property owners left City Hall shocked after the Allentown Planning Commission denied their requests for a break from a city ordinance that will cost each of them $8,000 to $10,000 for the installation of new sidewalks on their properties.
Hey, isn’t this the Big Bambu Bruce Springsteen’s hometown, the hard working steelers who got screwed by anybody and everybody but GOVERNMENT?
If you ask me, if you sleep with government dogs, you wake up with fleas.
This isn’t about sidewalks; it’s about payola, greed, graft and corruption of government. I could do a very large concrete driveway for $10K....
Let me guess,only the city approved contractor will be allowed to do the work.
They did this to us ten years ago in Arizona.
The city decided that we all needed new culverts in our driveways to cut back on flooding. They charged us each $1000-3000 for the cost of the pipe.
Hubby and I owned a strip of land that was used by two other people. (The only way to get in and out of their property), but WE had to pay up. (One of them was kind enough to give us $500 - no lawsuit or BS, just kindness, common sense, and a handshake. They were just good neighbors who wanted to keep it that way.)
So they took out our 24” pipe and put in 12” pipes. When the monsoons hit, the street and driveway flooded to hell. And I mean, we couldn’t get off our property for days kind of hell.
One of the neighbors organized us into a class-action lawsuit against the city and they did bend and replace the culverts with the proper pipe at cost to the taxpayers. (which was US, by the way)
To recap: The city forced us to come up with thousands of dollars to replace our functioning pipe with non-functioning pipe, then we had to pay to sue to get them to replace their work with functioning pipe that we ended up paying for with an increase in property taxes.
Government makes so much sense. /s