I hope you didnt have to sit through the knee pad council show.
The discussion of the mayors travel was nonsense as always. Frank Kane stated the mayor is the mayor and doesnt need approval to travel. But the rest of employees have to get approval. So no checks and balances for the mayor?
Such bullshit. He uses our money and the city is going to say he can go whenever he wants. He is not a king. He is responsible to taxpayers and we require policy and proper procedures when administering appropriated tax payer funds.
Sounds like the king is above the peasants.
A positive note
Council did acknowledge the Allen Varsity Boys baseball team who won districts this year before falling in the first round of the state tournament. Good job guys.
Marty Velazquez delivered albeit - through a proxy - an update on the Personnel Policy Manual rewrite. Frank Kane informed council that the document isn't ready after two years of development. The document is so out of date that employees and managers use its age as a reason not to follow the rules. Once you read through the bullshit and get past the tap dancing it is clear that HR failed once again. It really doesn't matter if a PPM is ever produced... it will only be enforced for those who the mayor, directors, and managers plan to target. All others are above the rules, starting with him.
Towards the end of the committee meeting CeCe asked the very question I had on my mind "is there a plan to abolish the homeless commission?". This may seem out of left field but Tuerk has made it known that he plans to disband the commission and has taken dangerous steps previously to minimize the impact and capabilities of the much needed commission.
Onward
Frank stated him and Chief Roca will be presenting a strategic plan on combating the violent crime in the city. Seriously guys? That is something you do when you get hired, not after you have been the Chief for 5 years and two kids were just killed.
The police DROP Pension took most of the 6:30 meeting.
Chief Roca started out by saying this isnt a money grab. Those were his 1st words. Awful choice of words.
After listening to his word salad justification for the DROP it appears this is a money grab.
Roca bragged about APD being the best department in the area. Stated his officers choose Apd for a career are eager to make a difference and sleep in their uniforms...blah blah blah. Allentown has the worst reputation as a police department in the area. This also came from a guy who spent 3 months on the street as a patrolman per his resume but talks as if he has grinded for 20years.
Im sorry but I walked away from watching the meeting for a little because I can't stand Roca's bullshit robot responses to everything. People want actions not words.
Chief don't you read social media and everyone complaining about the nuisance problems and all the crime?
The big focus I feel Roca was trying to hit home in his feeble attempt to persuade council was the city will have to pay overtime if guys retire. So if 10 guys retire, according to hiring fliers officers make over $100,000 a year. You can't tell me $1 million extra won't go a long way towards overtime considering the police are budgeted at 2.6 million.
A DROP will line the officers pockets at a huge tax increase cost. The 20 year plus guys will benefit. The Chief said that the absence of a DROP will cause more overtime. Huh? You would move out the high earners, promote deserving mid staff and hire more lower to replace those lost through retirement. What he isn't saying is that OT is offered and senior staff get first dibs because of.....well, money 💰 💵 💰. They go after the OT pay first. It is not for the junior officers. There was a very careful choice of words to scare the leaders to making the DROP a reality.
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35 comments:
I never saw so much begging by the Chief and the FOP Prez who has clearly never run past a buffet in a pursuit. This DROP has nothing but problems written all over it.
I cant wait to hear the mayors travel expenses. Im sure Kane didnt hand over accurate numbers. Transparency must take 6 weeks or more in his world.
Abe.
Once again the council played directly into the administrations hands. Do any of you know how to spot someone who has difficulties with the truth but is a good bullshitter? How many more times is this council going to allow the administration to not deliver on the request for travel information?
Kane said there would be verified numbers by Jun 01. It is now June 11 and they have nothing but an idiot saying once again “we can get that for you”.
Don’t you all realize the administration knows council has a short attention span and they maximize on that to do nothing?
I see it from my house, yet you all sitting in the same room miss it every time. Ya’ll are really looking foolish
By the way $0.12 per resident is $15,000. Half way through the year and the mayor has spent $15,000 on travel, transportation, lodging, and meals?
Yes Frank, please show us those receipts.
Will someone else with the public’s ear (like Abe) only with much greater reach (like a high ranking Member of Council, or maybe The Morning Call /TV69 finally find the COURAGE to stand-up and scream “STOP THE BULLSHIT that has taken over this city. We’re dying here, and all you’re doing is watching it all go down from the sidelines ! “
We did.
An idiot saying “we can get that for you.” charming.
Anonymous sir, perhaps it wasn’t clear that yesterday we delivered a full and comprehensive report of every expense that has been paid or reimbursed by the City of Allentown over the past six years.
We delivered a full and comprehensive report of every advocacy, travel and continuing education expense submitted for reimbursement or paid on behalf of the mayor and any department head or mayors office staff who travelled with the mayor. That total, for “travel” which is airfare, train fare, gas, mileage Electric vehicle charging… was $14,366.45 . For multiple people. Across 6 years.
The total for all meal reimbursements for the same six years… $1885.70. For six years. An average of $314.28 per year.
If you include lodging (hotels) and conference registration fees the grand total of all of it comes out to $76,842.50. The combined budgets for the city of Allentown between 2022-2026 were $1.2 Billion… or 0.00512 percent (5 thousandths of one percent) of total city budget during that time.
The $15,000 is not what the mayor expensed for flip flops and bubble gum in the first half of this year… the $15,000 figure is total spend of $76,842.50 divided by 6 years for all of the parties, perhaps ten different people, who were reimbursed for travel during that period. Divide that by 130,000 residents of Allentown and you arrive at 11.82 cents per resident that this city paid for this expense. I rounded up and said 12.
Those are the receipts that we submitted. They all followed the process set out for travel. They were all verified and reported on by the independently elected third party auditor who is was our controller.
You can like these expenses. You can not like them. You are always free to criticize what happened in your city with your tax dollars, but if I had been managing director during this time I would have approved these expenses because they follow our policies.
We submitted this full and comprehensive report to city council, and anyone here can have it too. It’s public information.
Honestly, we gave a broader and more robust report than we were required to provide. I probably should have run it past legal and redacted names of employees and other sensitive information. But we are public employees. It’s fair for you to know what happens with your tax dollars. So in the interest of time and transparency, we did not add another layer of review and just released them.
And I am not a person who feels obligated to maintain arbitrary deadlines that I never agreed to. I believe if you check the tape you will find that no one asked me if that deadline worked, it was just written in a memo somewhere. In my opinion, I will always take the time to properly assemble and review information rather than spit out a half-baked work product to meet an arbitrary deadline. My anonymous friends here on the truth blog have complained about this for as long as we have known each other but my
Philosophy is that you can do a lot of things, but you can never lie. You can never say that you know what you don’t know.
This is a pretty impressive reply, Verizon Frank! Assuming it’s from you, by you, and factual. Just kidding, but you never know these days in this time of Fake News, A.I., Fog of War, and other deceptions.
You are showing a straight-up, no bullshit, Trump-like side that is sorely needed here and at every other level of government. I’m no longer an Allentown resident, but THANKS ! just the same.
To answer Abe’s other comment.. of COURSE there are checks and balances for the mayor. One is the independently elected controller who audits the accounts and the other is city council who budgets those accounts. Every nickel of taxpayer money spent on anything in Allentown is authorized by city council and audited by the controller.
The media is also a check and balance. At the same time we sent this report to city council, we sent it to the morning call and WFMZ.
Also the electorate is the final check and balance. Every re-election is a referendum on the incumbent.
And you, and this blog, are another check and balance.
So, the DROP. Read the smoke signals, it is not popular and is not going to happen if Council has a say.
It is 💯 a cash grab, regardless of what the chief says.
Why do officials always try and say that the sky is falling and we will not have staff if we don’t give them what they want in incentives?
The reality is that these retirement eligible people should be moving on so that others move up in the organization with different approaches and ideas. CAREER PROGRESSION and ADVANCEMENT are two of the greatest retention tools and morale builders in an organization
As for overtime, the math ain’t mathin for me. If the retirement eligible employee moves on, there are internal promotions, and new patrolmen are hired. How is it possible that overtime would be required to fill the Gaps? This does not make sense. Again, carefully chosen words.
I think Cinthia Mota summed it up best with the greatest comment of the evening. “what do we have to sell to fund this? The. Municipal golf course?“
Frank the report of the expenses doesn’t even have the expenses listed!
No no. You did commit to a Jun completion after your “numbers were verified”. When we say receipts that indicates a physical document showing authorization, expenditure, reconciliation.
The mayor and your words are the problem here, so we need receipts to verify what you’re saying. Should be really easy for you to accomplish. Don’t forget to include his travel companions costs too.
I think Frank likes to compliment himself anonymously after his post.
I didnt like how Chief Roca implied the city should give the police whatever they want. Chief there is more to a city than just the police. Your getting a new 50million dollar station, you get new police cars, etc and now you want to bankrupt the city so your guys have a huge nest egg when they retire. Cmon man. You need to do better yourself.
Council better vote NO to the DROP program. Once someone retires that should be it… no double dipping and this is most definitely a money grab.
That F.O.P guy needs the money for a Jenny Craig class. He's a disgrace to the uniform. Spend a little more time in the gym then trying to rob the taxpayers where you don't contribute!
Anonymous friends…. Every person who travelled with the mayor is listed in the narrative and then if you compare that to the sheet with costs and the date, it shows the expense and is labeled with the person’s name.
What do you mean by “authorization and reconciliation?” Those are accounting terms. Money spent was authorized by council in each budget. You already know the “authorization.”
Reconciliation it’s not clear what you are asking for. Reconciliation is an accounting term that just means comparing credits to debits to make sure the account is balanced. I can’t imagine what that would have to do with anything. Here. People want to know where the mayor and other people in his orbit went and how much the city paid for that. You know how much. You know every expense. Of course the accounts balances. All state and municipal governments must have balanced budgets by law. Only the federal government can spend what it doesn’t take in.
I guess we could spend a lot more taxpayer dollars to actually look up some receipts to make sure that the $6 heath bar was actually a heath bar and we didn’t nefariously switch it out for twizzlers, but when you know that, what will you know that you don’t know now?
Also if any of my anonymous friends can direct me to a time stamp on the video in which I committed in the affirmative to a date of June 1, I will donate $100 to Abe’s favorite charity. Not. “Yes probably” or “we’ll do our best.” I could be wrong but I don’t think I am.
Current APD officer here…hey city council, you were lied right to your faces last night. The majority of our new guys hate the drop. It’s going to keep around the loads higher up that do nothing and provide zero upward movement for promotions. Guys will eat up any overtime that comes their way, so that’s not a big deal either. However, there won’t be much overtime because we will still have plenty of officers. At the meeting last night, they said that we hire 3-5 guys out of every 100 that apply???? That number is actually 10 out of every 100. They said that we hire 5-10 a year??? We hire 15-20 a year. Ask anyone at the academy or just go back through city council minutes for the hirings. They used to tout those numbers to us and the city daily so why have they suddenly changed to make hiring look so grim. These are all scare tactics by the administration to get you guys to pass this so an assistant chief can leave with a $600,000 check after doing nothing his entire career. Every time they asked a question such as “is this for perpetuity” Roca didn’t answer and just talked about how great it is to be a police officer. And yes, the fop president is a joke. He got that job because a few guys didn’t like the way the last president held the admin accountable.
Completely unnecessary comment. His appearance has nothing to do with this issue. You need to spend a little more time each day being kind and not just a nasty bully.
My greatest respect and admiration to every current APD officer. You could easily find less stressful work serving some local suburban community. I don’t know how you put up with so many street level thugs and wannabe gang bangers doing things to make to lives of others living in the neighborhoods miserable. I feel certain you’ve been told to look the other way on all the ‘smaller stuff’ that is making Allentown unattractive as a place to live or visit. As you well know, the smaller stuff creates even bigger problems later. Someone should explain this to the Mayor and Police Chief.
ABE, the knee pads are for those it's that have been rattling on about the green door's glory holes and there use of them while working stall!)$?
I've read a lot of the Facebook comments about the DROP program and many residents are pointing out good reasons to approve the DROP program (avoid OT expenses/retain experienced officers etc..). For me, I just do not trust the City and their ability to negotiate such a program intelligently and competently. I'm too skeptical that the union will build-in loopholes to be exploited the way they did when that complete ass Roy Afflerbach negotiated the ill-fated pension plan that crippled the City financially and caused us to sell the water and sewer plants. I don't think the current administration is any smarter than Afflerbach was back then. I'd vote no.
[My first comment to this post]
I reread Verizon Frank’s 11 Jun 5:42AM, 6:39AM, and 11:37AM comments. Appreciated would be some clarity regarding the “accounting terms” _allocation_, _authorization_, and expenditure. I have no accounting certification, but I’ve been toId I had good reasoning skills (previously applied to analyzing government funds). Allocation of funds is followed by authorization. If a real accounting type could parse these concepts out with respect to the City, it might help the public understand. (With apologies to previous work done on “process flow charts” by the Controller and Finance offices years ago.)
What follows is my understanding of the process. Please correct as appropriate. Within City departments, the budget states how big the pot of available money is for a line item, like training or conferences. When an employee requests, or is sent on, training or a conference, the department head signs the authorization request form. The City, as appropriate, expends funds for prior arrangements. When the employee completes the task, a claim form and receipts are submitted through the department to Finance. Appropriate reimbursements are made, subject to per diem rates. Where the public’s concerns come from is the role of the authorization form. If a police officer submitted a travel authorization request to spend two weeks in Aspen, Colorado in January to observe Ski Patrol procedures, one would expect the police chief to have some questions before authorizing budgeted funds. If the police chief wanted to use some of his department’s funds to do that trip himself, one would hope the mayor or finance director would question whether the allocated funds should be authorized. Now, if the mayor wants to say he’s going to use his budgeted travel funds for an Aspen trip to gain tourism and guest accommodation knowledge, how is that reviewed? I’m not sure Council anticipated such a theoretical trip when passing the budget. If there is no mayoral equivalent to the typical employee authorization, then, based on my read of Verizon Frank’s comments, any _possible_ accountability is after the fact.
Separately, when Verizon Frank says the release covers all travel for the last six years, listing the expense, the amounts, and can be cross indexed to the employee’s name, I sincerely hope that applies only to the mayor’s office budget, which I only infer from their comments. Since this was released without solicitor review, checking with other departments might have been wise, if the released information pertains to all employees.
I believe a news article regarding Mr. Glazier’s passing said that he was scheduled to present the travel expense information to Council just a day or few later. Does the Controller’s office intend to follow through independently, or does the administration’s presentation supplant any Controller findings?
I’m glad the city council saw right through the charade / cash grab. Watching the chief and fop president neg for this huge benefit and coming up with all kinds of bs reasons why the city needs to have the drop was hilarious. I can’t believe they had the fop president there acting like he cares at all about the city residents and arguing for the drop. He should’ve just said that they all want it so they can walk away with huge checks instead of coming up with all the OT money scare tactics. So if everyone enters the drop, and it lasts for 5 years, I’d bet 90-95% of those officers would stay in it for the whole 5 years then leave. So then what, 5 years from now the fop president will attempt to hold the city hostage again by saying all these guys are leaving we need monetary retention bonuses. If they were looking out solely to save themselves from a few officers retiring this year, the drop would’ve only been good for this year then go away. Instead, the fop president wants it forever, which totally destroys his argument about manpower/ ot etc. it shows they are just greedy. Like I said, glad the council saw through this. Go get it in negotiations like every other union
Abe, respectfully I disagree with you. Bethlehem has THE WORST POLICE DEPT in the local area. A DEI hire lesbian chief, rookie cops with no prior experience or knowledge of the laws or people they serve, and completely useless when it comes to serving the tax payers. So your Allentown Chief may be a complete DB Moron, he’s not a lesbian DEI hire.
Ps Mayor Reynolds sucks too. His Love Island comments exposed him for the idiot he is.
Addendum: Include “appropriations” in list of “accounting terms” and revise text as appropriate.
Verizon Frank - Is the travel report and any supporting documentation available on the city’s website?
If not, why not just do that so it’s easily available for anyone that wants to look at it and then the issue can be put to bed.
Just a suggestion.
Just because she is a lesbian does not automatically mean DEI. You want DEI? Hegseth is DEI.
When you hire the "first" for a high position that is identity over competency which is a pillar of DEI. The first female police chief. The first latino police chief. The first gringo to be 1/16 latino due to his abuela's partial heritage elected mayor. Ethnicity, sex, and sexual preferences are not accomplishments but are celebrated as such by the frisbee golfing bike lane advocates. ie lunatics.
To the turd commenting on the heft of the FOP dude, if a police officer comes to your aid (for any reason) are you going to refuse their help because you harbor mean girl hatred for plus size people? There are plenty of reasons to criticize people, fat shaming is right up there with segregation in terms of low IQ behaviors.
And Frank. Good Lawd you are GOAT. Even if you do comment positively on your own posts that would be epic. Your responses in and of themselves are refreshing. I do take issue with the "statistical insignificance" angle that McPronoun travel is a tiny portion of the budget stretched out over a few years. While you make an intellectual argument about the numbers, money is still money. Our money. McPronouns is a low rent grifter whose first real job of substance is the chief executive of a City (if you ask him it's the 3rd largest in PA and that means something).
And council is still populated by worthless toads who themselves have puffed up resumes and no real accomplishments. We are doomed. But at least we have the Truth Blog to remind them that as a benefit of the taxes we pay to fund their nincompoopery we get to say mean things about them. While we live and work right under their noses.
Good post...While I take the point that Tuerk's travel slush fund is a relatively small expense in the context of the overall budget, I wish he would consider the optics of running off to California for self-gratification with his "assistant" 4 times a year at the public expense. How many Allentown tax payers could never afford to take a vacation to California (never mind Spain!) and he rubs their noses in it with his embarrassing selfie videos. Those of us who had our mortgage payments go up last year and can look forward to future mortgage payment increases thanks to him (and ASD of course) don't need to see him giggling on selfie videos living it up in Spain on a free vacation courtesy of us.
https://allentownpa.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=A&ID=1415978&GUID=FAEAFE65-A617-41F9-BE31-7762ABB94200
The police and fire department pensions are high enough and have been designed by crafty people over the years to maximize the final amount. I am not at all in support of using any taxpayer dollars to fund the DROP.
Perhaps you should follow Bethlehem politics before making such a retarded “reply” comment. The Lesbian Chief and the rest of the incompetent officers of Bethlehem are not only DEI hires, they are a major drain on the tax payer with OT. They literally deployed cops to a “craft festival” (mostly whites) a couple months back, and then have the gull to say they are using up all the budgeted OT in a city council meeting. There is no crime at a craft festival. They were there why? They can’t hire in Bethlehem unless they come with DEI credentials because the Mayor is woke. Top salary increased in 6 months from 93K to 105K. Bethlehem Police dept is still the worst in the Valley. Don’t even try to argue it.
Verizon Frank,
Most people want to remain anonymous because “Mayor Matt” is not open minded and is actually very vindictive. Regardless if people identify themselves or not, they are mostly residents of Allentown and tax paying citizens.
Chief Rocca is upset because he was going to retire as Police Chief and Matt promised him the Managing Director position he ultimately gave to Verizon Frank. Matt is two faced and can’t wait for his career and power trip to be over in 3 years!
Verizon Frank was the better choice.
Roca doesn’t know how to speak. He has the same old speech for every situation and talks in circles trying to bridge irrelevant information into the discussion. I stopped listening to him because no matter what the subject the speech is the same so I already know what he is going to say.
All he ever talks about is training and how difficult recruitment is in Allentown. Recruitment is difficult because few people want to be officers anymore. Couple that with the horrible public perception of Allentown and it is a no brainer.
The line at glory hole #6 was really long last night any idea who was behind that wall Redd?
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