What:
Bethlehem Council Meeting
Date:
August 17th, 2021 at 7:00pm
This Bethlehem city council meeting began with a public hearing regarding the LERTA proposal discussed previously August 3rd and July 20th. A presentation was given by Ms. Roseberry, the city’s Housing Development Coordinator Administrator. The LERTA’s goal of encouraging affordable housing is laudable. It is a well established fact that rents have increased dramatically for years and that many households are rent burdened. Regrettably the current proposal has not increased the fee-in-lieu of affordable housing from $25,000. At the prior meetings where this LERTA proposal was discussed many concerns were raised that this fee was too low and was not arrived at through any process but was arbitrarily chosen. Other similar cities have much higher LERTA fees. As Councilwoman Crampsie Smith stated, under the HUD’s own recommendations the fee would be $42,450.
This was tacitly acknowledged when Councilwoman Negrón questioned Roseberry about State College’s LERTA and what their fee was. Roseberry was unsure about the LERTA fees of State College and other municipalities. Instead, falling back on the tired cliche of this proposal being “unique to here”, that “every development will change”, and that other municipality’s fees are “based on a formula”. It is a common tactic when more progressive proposals are put forward. It shifts focus to how our particular municipality’s situation is so special that said progressive proposal cannot work in our unique conditions. Such cliches were invoked by Reynolds and Calahan later in the meeting. No doubt unique conditions exist, but it is amazing how uniqueness is always used to limit progressive changes and never the reverse.
A further question is what happens to buildings with affordable housing after ten years when the LERTA expires. As Roseberry stated LERTA is “just one piece of the pie” in developing affordable housing. Further policy and action will be needed to make and maintain a liveable south Bethlehem such as developing infill and blighted properties in residential areas.
In the camp against raising the fee are Councilman Reynolds and Calahan. Reynolds argued that the fee needs to be set at the right level to encourage developers to take advantage of the LERTA. A lower fee would be better since it would encourage developers to pay it rather than build affordable units or not develop at all, that way the city could use the fee to help the most in need tenants in the city. Reynolds stated he would “leave it to the experts” to determine what the fee should be while implying that $25,000 was the expert consensus. Calahan largely echoed Reynolds, but was more bullish. He also revealed that he has a bias, being a landlord himself, stating that people who own invested properties raise their rents whenever taxes are raised which is why he is against raising taxes.
Anna Smith, who spoke at the July 20th meeting, repeated that the $25,000 fee was arbitrary. It was a figure arrived at not through a formula but was merely something the mayor and the administration were comfortable with. According to Smith, the experts to whom Reynolds would defer would state, “$25,000 per unit amount is too low and inflexible and does not take into account the best practices which were highlighted in a publication by the Urban Institute.” Using the best practices in this publication, she arrived at a figure of around $70,000 as an appropriate fee.
Another issue highlighted by the owner of the south Bethlehem ice rink is that many of these LERTA zones are parking lots currently in use. No doubt this is also true of lots near the SteelStacks and NCC’s Fowler Campus. Two other members of the community voiced similar concerns about the zones, the fee and other issues with the proposal.
Crampsie Smith proposed amending the LERTA proposal so that it would use the HUD formula rather than an arbitrary value for the fee-in-lieu of affordable housing with a 5% annual increase to the fee per year. She went on to elaborate that the average savings over the life of the LERTA would be $1 million to $2 million and that Pittsburgh, State College and other places in the state routinely have LERTA fees above six figures. Negrón framed Crampsie Smith’s amendment as a “compromise” as it was much lower than Anna Smith’s $70,000 figure.
In response, Calahan repeated his prior concerns bringing up the issue of unknown environmental hazards in this former industrial area that already discourage development due to their expense. Negrón suggested moving the LERTA to focus on blighted properties outside of the industrial area to avoid the issues with the parking lots and environmental hazards. The amendment failed 4-3.
Lastly, there was a cursory discussion of how to use the $34,000,000 of pandemic funding from the federal government, especially regarding making sure it helps the most disadvantaged and racial minorities. Right now discussions of how to use these funds are in the preliminary stage. In late September council expects to open discussion of the use of these funds to the public.