Saucon Source (https://sauconsource.com/category/opinion/)
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental health is becoming a much more frequent topic of conversation in the media and likely with people in our own lives.
Letter-writer Laura Ray of Lower Saucon Township says a modest endowment the Hellertown Area Library has been able to build over the past five years doesn’t mean that the library should be expected to “operate in the red and be penniless before they receive funding.” She asks Lower Saucon Township to fund the library at the level requested in a five-year agreement council rejected earlier this year.
A proposal for a possible library services agreement was shared Monday with the members of Lower Saucon Township Council and Saucon Source by Hellertown Area Library board president Ken Solt.
Instead of the report cards of our youth listing all of the subjects we have in school, an adult report card can include our top four or five priority areas. For example, perhaps your career is at an all-time successful high (A+), but your eating habits have taken a big hit working late hours and relying on drive-thru windows twice a day as your primary meal source. (Diet: D-)
U.S. Rep. Susan Wild (D-7) called Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “the most severe threat to European security and stability since World War II.” In a letter to her constituents, Wild noted that the Lehigh Valley is home to “one of the largest and most vibrant Ukrainian American communities in the United States” and offered support to area residents in need of assistance due to the conflict.
Former Hellertown Area Library board member Lara Goudsouzian, Ph.D., writes that she is “deeply disappointed in my local government” and that she supports “the actions of the Hellertown Area Library Board in removing Lower Saucon Township residents, myself included, from the board.”
Hellertown Area Library Board of Trustees president Ken Solt says in his letter that in spite of a lack of funding from the township, the library will “continue free library services to LST residents for the time being.” Solt also provides insight into conversations with state library officials in which he says it has been learned that the current situation “has no known precedent in the Commonwealth.”
Lower Saucon resident Victoria Opthof-Cordaro says the Hellertown Area Library trustees’ recent decision to amend the library’s bylaws and remove township representatives from the board was not only appropriate given the lack of an agreement with the township, but also in keeping with township council’s past “critical stance on library appointees participating in HAL board meetings beyond their term.”
Although most of us know it only as a modern, thoroughly commercialized holiday, newspaper stories and ads are proof that Valentine’s Day was popular with the young, the sentimental and those whose businesses catered to them well over 100 years ago.
Lower Saucon Township Councilwoman Priscilla deLeon writes that her attempt to put a library services discussion on the Feb. 16 council meeting agenda for discussion has apparently been thwarted. Some residents are upset and concerned over the future of library services in the township after a council majority rejected a proposed 5-year agreement with the Hellertown Area Library last month.
Perhaps it was an omen of even nicer days to come, or perhaps it was a reminder to think about the past. Whatever the reason why a vintage automobile was being transported along Bingen Road in Lower Saucon Township Thursday, it generated plenty of attention.
