'Bonkers': Allentown City Council puts millions of dollars at risk by delaying vote on new police station

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Allentown officials will be under the gun to meet strict federal deadlines on pandemic-relief money by the end of the year.

Allentown City Council on Wednesday postponed awarding a contract related to a new police station. That could force the city to send back up to $9 million, according to some officials.

Council voted 4-2 to delay a vote on that $1.15 million contract until budget season. That's scheduled to kick off in mid-October when the mayor is due to submit his 2025 annual spending proposal.

Council members set aside $9 million last year for public safety improvements, including work on new police and fire stations, but the city must “obligate” its ARPA funding through specific contracts by the end of the year or forfeit the federal money, city Finance Director Bina Patel said Wednesday.

Administration officials are “working with a very tight window” to ensure the city uses all of its ARPA money, and any delay “would not be a wise move,” Patel warned ahead of the vote.

“We need a contract in place,” she said.

Ahead of the vote, city Controller Jeff Glazier told council it would make it difficult for city employees to issue requests for bids and award contracts by the Dec. 31 deadline if they did not approve the contract Wednesday.

“It's the middle of August; it is a tight timeline to … do the plans and get the contracts done by the end of the year,” Glazier said. “I wouldn’t recommend you delaying.

“Can you postpone this? Yeah, at your own risk."

All contracts must go through the city's legal-review process before being executed, city Deputy Finance Director Jessica Baraket told council.

“So we’re pushing it if it gets approved tonight,” Baraket said. “There’s no way [with] any delay into October we would be able to get a signed contract done.”

City officials also must hire an architect by the end of the year if they want to use ARPA money for that contract.

Council hits pause

Despite those warnings, Councilman Ed Zucal called for the delay, and Ce-Ce Gerlach, Daryl Hendricks and Natalie Santos supported it.

Council Vice President Santo Napoli and Candida Affa voted against the measure. Council President Cynthia Mota was not at the meeting.

Zucal said he wanted to consider the contract as part of council’s discussions about capital projects during the 2025 budget process.

But Patel told members they already allocated money for the $1.15 million contract in the 2024 budget.

Administration officials were simply asking council to ratify that they followed proper procurement processes to issue the contract, she said.

Glazier also noted council’s limited role in the city’s contracting process.

Zucal and Hendricks said they felt left out of the process to choose the location for a new police station.

“Nobody from the Public Safety Committee was even contacted about this,” Zucal said.

Hendricks told officials from the police department and administration that he felt “a little offended” as a committee member and former police officer that he was not more involved.

Police officials and representatives from Alloy5 Architecture in February delivered an in-depth presentation to council.

That came after the architecture firm conducted a six-month study to determine the long-term solution and location for a new headquarters.

That study said the project to expand the current facility by more than 75% could cost about $37 million.

Napoli suggested the body hold a meeting next week on the contract and other upcoming capital projects to help officials meet ARPA deadlines.

Several of his colleagues seemed to support that idea.

Hendricks called for a meeting to be scheduled soon but less than five minutes later voted to postpone the discussion for more than two months.

'Bonkers' decision: Napoli

Council member Candida Affa said she was “puzzled” by her colleagues’ desire to delay a vote on the police-station contract.

“I don’t want to be in jeopardy of losing this money,” she said.

Napoli told LehighValleyNews.com after the meeting that council’s vote was “unbelievable” and “bonkers.”

He said he worries residents will be on the hook to pay for expensive new public-safety facilities if council’s vote to delay messes with ARPA funding for those projects.

“It’s just not going to work,” Napoli said of his colleagues’ insistence that contracts can still be completed between mid-October and Dec. 31.

Council “will be a laughingstock” if its vote forces the city to return millions of dollars in federal funding, Napoli said.

“Rule No. 1 is you never give back grant money,” he said.

Mayor Matt Tuerk on Thursday morning called council's vote to delay "unfair" and said it will put "undue stress" on police officials "to rush against a hard deadline or lose $9 million in federal funding."

"I'm disappointed by City Council's decision last night to vote against supporting our police department," Tuerk said in a statement to LehighValleyNews.com. "We've intentionally included council from the start of this process."