My
name is Kendall and I am a junior at Nazareth Area High School.
For the past 4 years, my family and I have had a book sale in our
neighborhood to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We sold books of
all kinds: children’s books, adult books, fiction, and non-fiction
and raised over $12,000 for Make-A-Wish®.

We are having another book sale this summer.  All the proceeds from
this year’s sale will benefit and assist the Make-A-Wish Foundation
of Greater Pennsylvania, Pottsville Regional Office in granting the
wish of a local 4 year old girl named Abigail. Abby has Leukemia and
wishes to visit Disney World. You can find out more about The Make-A-Wish Foundation at
www.wishgreaterpa.org.

We are now collecting books, either old or new. The only books that we
are not collecting are encyclopedia sets, text books and Readers Digest
condensed version books. At our sale, we will be selling books for 50
cents to $1.

The sale this summer will be on June 23^rd
from 5-8pm and June 24th and 25^th from 9am-2pm,

at our house at 143 1st Street in Farmview Estates, Upper Nazareth
(located between Nazareth Area High School and the Intermediate
School off Tatamy Rd).

Please help us out by donating books,telling your friends, and marking your
calendars to come shop at our sale in June. Book donations are being accepted now.

Books can be dropped by at our house and left on the front porch if we
are not home, or at the following locations:

 Lower Nazareth Elementary School

Nazareth Middle School

Nazareth High School

Happy reading and hope to see you in June!

If you have any questions, please email niqueohr@gmail.com

Thank
you for your generosity,

Kendall
Ohrwashel

I retired from Northampton Areas School District July of 2008 where I
served as Principal for 21 years and a teacher for 20 years.  I served
on the Nazareth Area School District Board for 12 years (1985-1997).

I have always been very active in the community; currently serving as a
board member on the National Canal Museum, Nazareth Area Food Bank,
Nazareth Area Citizens Committee for ESROC, Moravian Hall Square
Retirement Community, Moravian Academy, Nazareth Lions Club, and the
Southeast PA Board of Directors for Odyssey of the Mind.  I also serve
as the President of Church Council for the Nazareth Moravian Church.

In the Past I have served on the Nazareth Borough Council, the Board of
the Nazareth YMCA, Nazareth Moravian Church Board of Elders and
Christian Education Committee, Eastern District Education Committee of
the Moravian Church, Northern Province of the Moravian Church Education
Ministries and as a Board member of the Moravian Historical Society.

I believe my career in education in conjunction with my experience
collaborating  with various boards and committee’s would be useful in
solving the issues facing the Nazareth Area School District.  Please
write in Darrell Crook for the Lower Nazareth School Board seat.  You
may contact me at” dwcrook45@gmail.com with any questions.

Timm Tenges and Kelly Sullivan are aware of this and it is on their To Do List.

The site is easy to navigate and they have included for download: Agendas, Meeting Minutes  and most Township forms.  Not that you are likely to need it (since almost everything is already available on line) but you can make your document requests online.

As a result, sometime in the not to distant future I will be shutting down my web site (http://lowernazareth.org) but do plan to keep the Blog (http://forum.lowernazareth.org) going.  I will keep the web site up for a while in case there is any info available that isn’t on the Twp. site.

Express Times Article

I just received a call from Renee Ferretti ,the neighborhood lawyer, who petitioned IDI’s appeal along with Lower Nazareth’s and Palmer’s Solicitors, Gary Asteak  and Chuck Bruno on November 27th. The Court of Common Pleas heard the case and Judge Kim McFadden had 90 days to return a verdict. The court upheld all but one condition  Lower Nazareth’s placed on IDI!!
IDI does not have to do another  traffic study but all other conditions would have to be met, including the big problem for IDI…time constraints! e could only hope that IDI crawls away  from this location now, considering the state of the economy,  but they do have 30 o appeal to a higher court.  I’ll keep you posted.  Email me if you are interested in viewing the decision and I’ll let it to you when I receive it on line.
Needless to say, a BIG congrats and THANK YOU  go out to Renee, Gary & Chuck and a BIG thank you again to the Lower Nazareth board for all the time & consideration they gave to all of us fighting to preserve the quality of our lives!

So far, so Good :)   See attachment for celebration information.

Ginger
(save.neighborhood@gmail.com)

Celebration Gathering

I have some work to do to transition the web site for the new year but  here’s some info to hold you over.  In December Lower Nazareth Twp. (LNT) approved a new budget with NO TAX Increase.  The January 5th, 2009 reorganization meeting was held and there were no surprises.  I will have info and documents posted on the web site as soon as possible.  (Meeting Schedule, Fee Schedule, Holidays etc…)

I have been assured by the Township Mgr. that the Lower Nazareth Township official website is almost ready to go live,  it still needs to be reviewed by the Supervisors.  One thing they have already put up (on the old site) is the new Open Records Policy as well as a form for requesting records.  I was the first to use it and let me say it is worlds ahead of the old method.  Not saying it couldn’t be improved. On a high note Timm has requested feedback on the process with aims to fine tune.

The next BOS meeting is scheduled for January 14th, 2009 at 7:30pm at the Township Hall.  I hope to have the website updated before that.

WebAdmin

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Lower Nazareth Crime Watch

Our next meeting is this Friday, December 5th, at 7:00 PM, Township Municipal Building, Buztown Road.

The agenda are as follows:

1. Recap our accomplishments to date.
2. Township Police Blotter
3. Membership comments.
4. Future organizational topics.

Joe Fresco at LNTcrimewatch@aol.com or 610-837-3446

*****************

“If you want to see a difference in government - get involved in local government. Municipal and school board seats often go uncontested or are left vacant, yet the decisions they make have the most immediate impact on our daily lives.

I noticed they are charging a fee, which I’m not particularly fond of, and while I don’t have time to run another Resident to Candidate event, I’ll try to get information up on the site so individuals can get all the relevant information.”
*******************

The above was copied from the NOC site.

I’ll wait for the meeting minutes before commenting further to see if both of our remarks are accurately and completely reflected.

As noted in earlier comments, the Draft 2009 Budget is now available for review on the LNT Citizens web site, go to the Other Documents page; as proposed there would be no tax increase.  Also available on the same page is the Auditors report of LNT’s 2007 finances.

Stay Tuned.

There were three items on the agenda under Managers Report.

1. Project Time Extension Reports
2. Draft 2009 Budget
3. Authorization to advertise use of CPA to perform Audit.

#1 - These extensions are requested by developers & applicants when they are not ready to proceed to the next step of their projects.  In the past each and every extension was voted on and passed by the Board, a waste of public meeting time.  In a prior Board meeting authorization was granted to the Township Manager to handle these as an administrative task and provide status reports (conceptually a good measure) to the Board.  However,  the implementation is lacking.  In the past a citizen could monitor the Township Board Minutes and keep track of any given project and it’s status as time extensions were part of the Plan of Record, - NO longer.   How does this impact you, why should you care? Here’s a scenario:

Say you were following the IDI Warehouse project (the one bordering Palmer Twp. which is currently in litigation) and the developer was scheduled to present at a future Board Meeting which you planned on attending and schedule your time accordingly.   At an interim meeting the Developer files for an extension which was routinely (and justifiably) granted, and it became part of that meetings minutes.  You read the minutes and see that IDI will not be at the next meeting, they have been granted an extension to XX/XX/2008.  You modify your calendar to accommodate the change.  Now these extensions are granted administratively (a good thing) but they are not incorporated in the minutes (a bad thing.)  Unless or until someone requests a copy of the Extension Report and publishes it, there is no indication whether/if  the project you are interested in has filed for an extension and what their new timeline is. 

#2 - Now here’s some good news.  Mr. Tenges reported the draft budget does NOT include a tax increase for 2009, the tax rate for LNT will remain 4.15 mils.  The overall budget purportedly has a net increase of $42,500.  Reflected in the budget is an increase of approximately $50K for the Colonial Regional Police contract (mostly wages & benefits) and a tentative budget increase of 4% for the Nazareth Area Library as well as an increase of ~$30K for the Fire Department.  Mr. Tenges claimed reductions in other areas of the budget  allow the Township to maintain basically a flat budget.  A copy of the budget has been requested and will be posted when obtained.  The draft budget will be advertised and it is anticipated the Board will vote on it at the first meeting in December (12/03/08 @ 7:30pm).  Tim noted that the 2009 budget also makes provision for an additional person in the Road Department when he’s ready to fill it.  (Don’t know, and didn’t ask if this is the Roadmaster position at + $60k per year.  Will look for it in the budget.)

#3 - Procedural issue.  Hmm, now that I am looking at the 11/05/08 agenda, I’m not sure if LNT is advertising FOR a CPA  to do the audit (a bid) or advertising that they are going to use one.  If the latter, how will they be selected?

#3 - Here’s the bit: PA Code for 2nd Class Townships require the Twp advertise if they are using  a CPA in lieu of the Elected Board of Auditors.  LNT has been using a CPA for years and makes the appointment at the annual reorganization meeting which is open to the public.

 Okay, now I’m getting on my soapbox.  Let me preface this note with the comment I believe spending $12,178.00 for a wide format printer/copier/scanner is a good idea.  But here’s the irony in Tim’s request and logic.

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