You may say what you will about Allentown's mayor, its developers, Neighborhood Improvement Zone or PPL Arena/Phantoms project, but in only three years. They got things done … efficiently!

In Carbon County we have an antiquated system for developing properties into commercially viable enterprises. While currently working to bring many jobs to our great county, I have been bounced back and forth to county planning, municipal zoning and planning and sewage and water, and supervisor or council board meetings.So when you have the first review on a plan on the first Wednesday of a month from the planning board, you must return the first Wednesday the following month, when that board tells you that zoning should really take a look at this as well. Their meeting is the first Tuesday of the following month.This takes two or more months, and then you go in front of the Carbon County planning board which tells you that their approval cannot take place until you have approval from the Carbon County Soil and Conservation folks, and oh, by the way, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation must also have your driveway approved, which takes three or four months since they are overwhelmed with other projects like widening busy Route 443, a plan overdue and underfunded for over a decade.Best-case scenario while back and forth from meeting to meeting as minor changes are made between engineers and lawyers, this process in most communities takes two years.Here is a thought … why not have a representative from each governing board or township sit down with the person trying to bring a new building to your community and have the engineers (which are all different for each entity and paid by the developer!) review the plan and suggest ALL of their changes at once?This would save the taxpayers, the landowner and thus their tenant quite a bit of money and more importantly give Carbon County the reputation as being THE place to do business!Allentown has brought many people to their downtown and over $1 BILLION in construction with innovative tax incentives and is attempting to stop the tide of residents moving out of their downtown to communities in other areas like Carbon County.In the new year … what will WE do to be more business attractive?Joseph J. BennettLehighton