Mr.

Hanlon, you can do a roll call.

Ms.

Moda here.

Mr.

Pungo.

Here.

And Ms.

Appa.

Here.

You are all here.

Awesome.

Good evening, everyone.

The purpose of this meeting is to hear testimony of previous snow program in the city.

And uh before we move into uh this discussion, I just want to take a moment to recognize someone really, really special who's who is with us tonight.

We're lucky to have former councilwoman Pam Barconi here with us.

I'm so excited.

It is amazing meeting you.

I heard so many wonderful things about you, by the way.

Pam has been a big part of Valentine's story.

During her time on council, she brought a real sense of care, thoughtfulness, and commitment to the to the work, especially when it came to making sure people weren't falling through the cracks.

A lot of the conversation we're having tonight, especially around programs like Snow Angels, built off of the kind of uh groundwork that Pam helped put in place.

And I think it's really important that as we look at how to improve and grow these efforts, we also take the time to learn from the people who help shape them in the first place.

Pam has always led with heart, but also with a clear understanding of how to turn ideas into something that actually works for residents.

And that is exactly the perspective we need right now.

So, Pam, thank you for everything you're giving us to this city.

And thank you for being here with us tonight.

We really appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences.

And um we decided that we try and put together a cooperative effort with the county.

So I went to then county executive Jane Baker and explained the general concept to her.

She approved the county's cooperation, so it became a joint effort between the city and the county, which I think quite frankly is a wonderful model for uh cooperation and joint effort.

And what we did was we started to use the juvenile offenders, nonviolent offenders from the county as the laborer because they needed to work off their community service hours.

And this was a way for them to do it.

The program came together with the help of uh then police officer, and I'm sorry, I don't remember his exact title, but he was a member of the police force.

Michael, do you remember his community relations person?

Yeah, community liaison officer or something, and by the way, Michael Hanlon was also very instrumental in putting this together.

I'm sure all of you who have worked with him know how important Michael is to making this city run.

So we um we got in touch with uh with Mal Mollinotti, and he got in touch with his counterpart in the county, and they handled the the kids who were going to be doing the labor, and they you know qualified them, and who was you know behaving well enough to be part of this program because it was like an honor to be part of this program.

So that was a wonderful motivation for the kids to you know do what they were told to do.

We um we were able to get uh there was a lot of momentum behind this, and uh I was a pretty good salesperson, if I do say so myself.

So uh we got a uh pickup truck donated by Out in Chevrolet.

Uh at that time it was valued at $15,000, and uh they donated a pickup truck to us and Home Depot donated all of our shovels and salt and equipment.

Uh so the program did not require very much input from taxpayer dollars at all.

Uh it was pretty much a free program.

And the people would call into City Hall, Allentown handled the um the calls, and then those I Michael, was it your office that took the calls?

We took the calls, yeah.

And uh put the list together, had a spreadsheet uh of where the people were located, what they needed, and that information went to Al Malinotti and the Allentown police department, then he coordinated with his counterpart in the county, and they would go out with the kids and they'd chaperone them and they'd set up a you know a map, they'd take on a certain area and they'd go out that day and cover that area.

Um it was extremely successful because it was such a win-win for everybody.

The city looked like they were giving this free service to the citizens.

Uh the county looked good because they were providing the labor, and what was the biggest winner out of it all were the kids.

They got affirmation that a lot of them probably never had in their life.

Um people would come out of their homes and thank them and hug them and give them hot chocolate and tell them how wonderful it was for them to come and help.

And a lot of the kids talked about what it meant to them to have somebody appreciate them like that, and these people would come out and hug them.

And so it was it was a really worthwhile program on every single level.

The only negative I could find in the program was that the amount of calls that we were receiving were overwhelming, and we could not handle it all.

There just weren't enough bad juveniles uh being offered community service to take care of all the citizens that needed help with their snow and ice removal.

But uh the program uh went on for several years, and then I left council and I left government, and I don't actually know what happened to the program after that, but it was extremely successful for several years, and we would get uh Michael and I talked about this, we would get phone calls and letters from citizens saying I I can't believe the city did this for me.

I don't know what I would have done without you, and the kids were wonderful, and um there were lots of letters, weren't there, Michael, and phone calls and things that came in.

So you had to be analysis that was a high so it um we're we're very we were very proud of it.

So it's very we were very proud of it.

Everybody was a winner, and it was a great joint cooperative effort between the city and the county.

Wow.

And you will know in a little bit what happened with your program.

Okay, we have uh Mr.

Mr.

Rick.

Uh uh Doherty, he's he's gonna tell us a little bit about that.

Okay.

Um, but um before before we bring um Rick, uh we would like um do you guys have any questions for Ms.

Ums Pam?

I would say the best thing about uh Pam was you always brought Mary Ann Donuts to the snow jobs.

Well that's also that is awesome.

Wow.

Um any any comments from the day?

Go ahead.

Comment.

Thank you, Pam.

I'd just like to know what happened to this wonderful program.

Um to be known as a lady too.

I'd like to know what happened to the $15,000 truck.

Wow.

It's amazing how much help she got from really bring back.

I mean, it's uh an amazing story, and thank you so much.

Definitely.

Any other comment?

Any other comments?

I do.

I think I'm gonna wait to document.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

It was such an honor meeting you.

Thank you for everything that you have done for the city.

Now I would like to welcome Mr.

Rick Doherty from Lehigh Valley Active Life.

Lehigh Valley Active Life has been such an important partner in supporting our senior residents.

And Rick, Rick brings a really valuable perspective when it comes to program like snow angels, especially in understanding the real needs on the ground and how this services impact people day to day.

We appreciate you being here with us tonight to share your experiences and insights as we think about how to spread in this program moving forward.

Rick, thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

Good to be here.

So my memory is not always 100%, but what I recall is I believe Mayor Palawski brought this back.

And we probably ran it for about four to six years.

I think it ran out of steam probably about 2018.

At the time it began, the Allentown School District had a 40-hour community service requirement for graduation.

So that's where we were able to get uh student volunteers in the middle of the program that disappeared, and so did our volunteers, and then uh we just had to end the program because uh we didn't have people to do the snow shoveling.

We did and we will again do a coordinating effort where we will get whatever paperwork needs to be completed.

We asked the homeowners to ver verify they had insurance.

We ask them to sign a waiver in case there were any injuries, and uh then um I'm not even sure what the students might have filled out, they might have filled out a waiver also.

But going forward, we would be willing to handle the paperwork, we would be willing to get the list of senior citizens, get the list of students and where everybody lived, and look to match them up, and then we would do the follow-up that day to see if uh the snow was in fact shoveled.

The one positive thing for us is a couple of inches of snow, we usually shut down, but we still come in, so we could easily spend the day doing this when our normal operations are shut down.

I would I would strongly encourage not moving forward on this until you had a very solid core of volunteers identified.

Okay.

It it worked fine.

There were glitches.

Joey didn't show up at Mabel's house.

Um the kids almost always got some kind of money from from the folks.

Um, because as I think many of us know, this is not um always an issue for money.

It's just the manpower.

Um it doesn't seem to be youth in the city going around and shoveling snow for people.

I don't know why that has shifted, but it's definitely not happening now.

Um we didn't have donuts, so that might have hurt the program.

But we could bring them back.

It's a definite need.

One of the challenges was um the focus, I think, of former mayor Pulowski was for the compliance with the code to get your sidewalk shoveled within the the set amount of time.

However, often that would morph into, well, my car's out there, or I have a driveway here.

Um and you could set a policy that would limit what is done sidewalk to the house, uh sidewalk that was public, um, or you could allow it to be open-ended if the students uh wanted to do more shoveling.

I would be most nervous about shoveling at a car.

I think it's dangerous, they're out in the street, and there's also a greater likelihood that there could be damage done to the car.

So those are some of the practical things that you want to think about moving forward.

So where um when you first um started this program, where did most of the um referrals came from?

We focused it was this was a city program.

Um and most of the referrals I think came from center city and the west end.

There were fewer on the east side, and I think there were fewer on the south side.

Okay.

Any comments from the day?

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Miss Alpha.

What happened to the uh the prisoner uh program?

Uh talking about the students, it would happen today.

We never started with that.

We always started with the students because at that point there were a lot of students who needed community service hours, and so that worked well for us.

And it's different now.

I believe it's gone.

I don't believe that's a requirement anymore.

Oh, that's not a requirement for the uh juveniles to no that I I believe the Allentown School District had a requirement for community service for graduation for a certain period of time.

We seem to work better with the prisoners.

According to Patrick, well, no, she she meant she meant uh teenagers who used to maybe um they were well juveniles, yeah.

Who who were they were uh they were not prisoners, they they were probably on probation, you know.

That's it for probation, yeah.

Yeah, probation.

They weren't incarcerated.

So they were incarcerated, but why aren't we going back to that program?

So the the quality of the program was good.

So the the students from the Allentown School District did a very good job.

There was no diminishment in the quality.

Our role is strictly coordinating the program.

We and when we had met, um I'm not going to be recruiting volunteers.

That's not going to be something I'll be doing.

Yeah, this this will be this will be our job.

And if I could chime in here, it it I think the key distinction is that they were two similar programs but born of different places.

So one was kind of a cooperation between the county and the city that developed and started there.

The snow angels program specifically started in the schools and was trying to find you know opportunities for students.

And did Mr.

Dochney's point, yeah, the graduation requirement that was either a project or a you know a certain amount of community services no longer in place.

I believe they have other testing requirements for that.

Um so that part of the incentive is kind of is essentially gone.

Um, but I I think it it'd be great to kind of plug into our schools and try to see where we can find.

I think there's a lot of organizations, a lot of clubs.

Yeah, like the wrestling club, you know, the soccer.

I mean, you name it.

Yeah, there's teams where you can almost have them, even if it's you know, set certain dates.

I think there's there's a framework that can be worked, but I think that happens with maybe a collaboration with the school district.

School district, definitely.

We have a meeting coming up.

I don't know if that's something that maybe is discussed there.

Sorry.

Sorry, Council President.

You are next.

I love it.

That's great.

Go ahead, go ahead, Mr.

President.

Um, I'll just quickly add, and Mr.

Pungo's dead on.

Um, this does require collaboration.

Um, we uh Ms.

Ortega, our public affairs and policy.

Um we met with the school district and we actually discussed this.

And um, it's something that we are gonna bring up at our workshop, which we have scheduled for June 23rd, the Tuesday, and that's an opportunity for us to work with uh Allentown School District to maybe help with recruiting.

Uh Ms.

Ortega had a funny comment during the meeting where she's like talking about the potential stories about how like the Allen football team and the dear football team were shoveling elderly sidewalks and and how great of a story that would be.

So to your point, um there's so many great opportunities, and um it's just a matter of connecting the dots and this workshop uh hopefully can play a part.

So that's something we definitely want to add to our agenda uh for that meeting.

So excited.

That will be awesome, definitely.

We're we're we're in.

If you need our services, um we will certainly do do what we can do, and we'll basically do what we did before.

We will do the coordination.

That's awesome.

That's great.

Any other comments from the dais?

Go ahead, Miss Carla.

I mean, I I understand that we would get to kind of like restructure this the way we would want, but just out of curiosity, were there income requirements or could it be no one?

Okay.

No, we didn't, and I I believe we also helped people who were not senior citizens but had a had a disability that prohibited them from clearing and shoveling.

And that was my next question, and then also were um so it was citywide, so you didn't have to be uh in a certain area, anyone in the city.

You had to be in the city, right?

So you couldn't be in Salisbury, you couldn't be in South Whitehall.

But okay, all right, and then I guess my last question is businesses cannot call, only residents.

And landlords cannot call.

Yeah.

Because my understanding is they're responsible for shoveling their sidewalks.

Now, somebody mentioned to me that on some leases the tenant might be responsible for that.

I I'm not aware of that, but we always felt that it had to be the uh the tenant or the homeowner or the homeowner, not the landlord.

And then back then, was there any coordination between sweep and the program so that before sweep issued a ticket, they would make available the service.

That's a good point to bring that into it.

Yeah, there's something that we can look, yeah.

Yeah, there's something that we can look at at that.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, I think it sounds sounds like a this is I'm excited about this program.

You know, I think that this is gonna be um great for the community.

I mean, it happened before, you know, thanks to Pam and any work.

Um, you know, they did an amazing job, so I cannot wait.

And I know that Rick also um did this with Milagros Canales, and he he worked really well.

So I think that you know, hopefully uh we can continue this.

Any other comments from the uh Dais?

Just one more word.

Go ahead, Ms.

Alfa.

The warmest part of the entire report was children, the children that didn't get the support and the hugs and the so on and so forth.

That was that was the most touching part of the entire thing to get uh children that are disadvantaged or in some kind of trouble.

I think that's what um even though the whole program was great, but the most touching part was what it did for the children.

It's beautiful.

Any comments from the public?

No comments from the public.

Okay.

Well, um, thank you so much, fam.

Thank you so much, uh Rick.

Thank you for taking the uh the time to come to City Council and to talk about this wonderful program.

So at this time, this meeting is uh oh no, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Wait, we have one we have here um yeah, but would you like would you like to uh because you you were around when that happened when um Rick was having that um uh that program with uh Milagro Canales?

You were part of that.

At that time I was a street superintendent, so I do recall having some limited interaction with the snow angels.

I thought that it was a fantastic program.

Um but to Rick's point, you know, if you don't have the volunteers that are fully committed to something like this, it's it's a it's a big undertaking, and just having uh the commitment of the volunteers is gonna be a critical step making sure a program of this type, you know, can be successful in the long run.

So we're in full support.

I think it's a fantastic uh idea, and the public works department will certainly be behind it in support in any way we can.

Thank you, Mr.

Shatter.

Any any comments, questions for Mr.

Shah?

No, okay.

Well, I guess anything that you anything else that you would like to share?

Uh I don't have any uh other updates at this time.

We're meeting on the 20th, so I'll have a few agenda items at that time.

All right, well, thank you so much.

This is exciting.

So at this at this time, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.