At the Wed, 2 Nov, 2011 Water and Sewer Authority meeting the board was questioned extensively about the Leehurst development; the proposed gift to Toll Bros of $1.8 million; the “customers” of the monopoly authority being forced to pay for the $1.8 million gift, the missing plans to upgrade the Force Main at all let alone for Toll, and about the 2011 budget. Exec Director Tom Zeuner answered my question about the $5.8 million LOSS. LOSS is the word Zeuner used in the 2011 budget that he prepared and which the Board approved. Zeuner said “there is no $5.8 million Loss.” If that’s true the budget was false. If Zeuner was wrong and the budget was correct there was a $5.8 million loss in the budget. That validates Frank Rothermels claim.

The Board fibbed all thru the meeting. Next night there was a presentation by Supervisor Frank Rothermel at the Bux-Mont Church on Jacksonville road, near the Leehurst development. Steve McGill Chairman of the Northampton Republican Committee was there and he recorded everything Rothermel and Dr. Rose said. He was caught recording. He had not requested permission. Also attending was our Infamous Northampton Republican Self-described ‘Kamikazi’. We try not to use his name but his wife figured promontly in the Grand Jury investigation and report about the abuses in the Register of Wills office where she worked.

The next day McGills recording seems to have been used on an anonymous GOP website presentation to condemn the conclusion that Toll Brothers “benefited handomely” from the Northampton GOP just as Dr Rose’s opponent wrote in his email about GOP Pay-To-Play.  McGills secret recording and the cowardly anonymous website  seem connected. Does McGill know the anonymous website writer? How many GOP insiders in Northampton know the cowardly website author? They need to keep their identities and connections concealed too because of the disgusting nature of their lies.

At the end of the GOP report, reproduced below, (it’s not copywrited), I’ll make additional comments. They will be printed in Green, not yellow the color the GOP website should be.

Here is what the GOP report says:

Anybody catch the Show last night at Bux-Mont Christian Church?
We listened in on the meeting last night. It was an evening of documents, double-talk and carefully crafted deception. Frank apparently promised to uphold the Ten Commandments including Thou Shalt Not Lie. It’s too bad God doesn’t exact immediate justice anymore. (We can’t even put a graphic in, we’re so disgusted at the fact that he would say such things in a Church.)

THE STRAIGHT DOPE
Bear with us here. We know this is a lot of verbiage with no pictures, but we decided to set satire aside in the service of plain talk.

In case you’re not in the know, Frank Rothermel circulated an email (a venomous one, we might add), in which he accused the Water Authority of a sweetheart deal with Toll Bros. in regard to a development going in at Leehurst Farms. His email was followed (of course) by a press release from Kim Rose (creepy). All of this is based on minutes posted at the end of October 2011 on the Water Authority’s website.

THE LIE:
Rothermel’s e-mail title says is all: $1.8 MM Ratepayer Funded Bailout to Toll Bros. Rothermel states the Water Authority, for some unknown reason, threw the Toll Bros. a bone by refusing to make Toll Bros. pay for the entire upgrade to the pump house and main for it’s new development. According to Rothermel, and then Rose, they based their conclusions on minutes posted and previous Water Authority practices.

THE TRUTH:
First, finding the truth wasn’t so hard. Maybe Frank Rothermel doesn’t have the number to the Water Authority – we’re sure it’s on the same website as the Water Authority documents that Frank Rothermel displayed at the meeting. A call to Zeuner might have been in order. WAIT, NO THAT’S CRAZY TALK. Actually going to someone who could explain right away would be too easy – plus it would be harder to ignore when spinning a story to the public. We’re surprised no one at the meeting thought of doing that either. Why is it so much more alluring to believe certain people are doing something wrong than believe the truth?

We made some calls, made a few inquires. Actually the first thing we did was read the WATER AUTHORITY’S RESPONSE ON THEIR WEBSITE, and then we asked around. Do you think you want the truth? This part is really important to the whole story – and it’s the part Frank left to the very end of the meeting and basically made a joke of it.

The TRUTH is (as stated in the Water Authority’s response): “The current pump station and force main serves the equivalent of 356 homes” and “There is an existing sanitary sewer capacity problem with the pump station and force main. The Authority has the responsibility to remediate and upgrade the capacity problem. . . The permanent solution to the capacity problem is supported by PA DEP.

Ok, stop right here. DO you understand what that means? Any of you who attended the meeting last night or anyone who is lending any weight of truth to Frank Rothermel, LISTEN CLOSELY:

The pump house and force main had problems before Toll Bros. entered the picture. The water Authority had already discussed the fact with PA DEP before Toll Bros entered the picture. The Water Authority now has budgeted $1.6 Mill for the 2012 budget cycle (Nov 2011 – Oct 2012) for the upgrade because Toll Bros. is covering $880K, saving the Ratepayers money.

TRUTH MIGHT RUIN THE FICTION
The best part – Frank Rothermel, Kim Rose, Tim Snee, Rodger Bushnel, Bill O’Neill and all the others bent on believing there’s something wicked at the Water Authority – they heard all of this the night before at the Water Authority meeting. If Frank Rothermel or Kim Rose didn’t believe what they were told, didn’t they have a responsibility – before they presented anything to the public – to talk to Tom Zeuner, to get the facts straight from the executive director? Well, now the truth might ruin FRANK’S fiction.

WHAT ELSE DID THEY FIND OUT AT THAT MEETING?
That for those who don’t understand accounting, the Authority is not $5.8 million in the red. Think of it this way. If you made a $100,000 a year and that same year you took out a loan for $150,000 upgrade to your house, on paper you would have a net loss of $50,000. But that doesn’t mean your checking account is overdrawn for $50K.

REALLY – do you think Frank Rothermel doesn’t know this? Do you think Kim Rose, who owns her own small business, doesn’t know this?
 Forget at this point that Kim Rose following along behind Frank Rothermel and letting his lies become her own.
 Forget the fact that as a candidate she shows no desire to go beyond looking at some documents that she might be able to twist to her advantage in order to actually find the truth.
 Focus instead on the question of how can anyone elect Rose when claims she wants transparency and fiscal responsibility yet she has no idea how a budget or an accounting balance sheet works?

 What does this mean???

 Rose has shown her ignorance about tax issues
 Rose has shown her ignorance of Supervisor protocol – a standing Supervisor can’t talk about an issue when they’re still in evidence gathering mode. Maybe she figures Frank ignores it, so she can too.
 Rose has shown her unwillingness to find the facts by talking with people outside of Frank Rothermel’s approved circle – who all follow Frank Rothermel.

THIS ROSE DOESN’T SMELL SO SWEET!!!!

The letter from Zeuner is a political document, not a list of facts. At best it’s full of half truths, lies really, posing as facts. For example, Zeuner fails to mention the loss in the 2011 budget. Why? It can’t be concealed. We have it as evidence. It’s false that the pump needs to be upgraded as Toll is supposedly doing to help the Authority. Note there is no definition of the alleged upgrade. Why? Because we could check the value and catch them in another lie.

The Water Authority does not have a balance sheet. There is no list of the assetts. the Authority is a government monopoly that has taken the assetts that control the water and sewers in Northampton. Zeuner, regardless of his title is a creature of the Northampton GOP Supervisors. They can fire him if he fails to write a letter that praises the Toll deal. 

Also, the GOP HateSite admits several times that Supervisor Rothermel used the documents of the Water Authority to base his presentation. The GOP site says: “All of this, (Rothermels Presentation), “is based on minutes posted at the end of October 2011 on the Water Authority’s website.” Yet the GOP wants you to believe Rothermel is lying when it’s the words used by the Water and Sewer Board including the attorney’s and engineers who are hired by them.

There’s plenty of time after the election to keep up the pressure on the Water Board and Deon, Komelasky and Silver, to encourage them to tell the truth but as we know they lie and continue to lie even when we catch them. They have no shame. 

There is a short term solution to the GOP pay-to-play. Elect Dr. Rose. Push 12B. Lets make sure these bad Republicans stop corrupting my party.   

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