Northampton County on track to limit funding for LV Planning Commission

• Northampton County's proposed 2024 budget leaves the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission about $95,000 short of its request
• In a budget hearing Wednesday, officials said spending more than $605,000 on the body would mean considering an independent county planning commission
• Council President Kerry Meyers said he wouldn't consider giving the LVPC its full request until he knew how much the group spends on salaries each year

EASTON, Pa. — Northampton County’s next proposed budget would limit funding for the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, officials said during the County Council’s first budget hearing Wednesday.

In the proposed 2024 budget, County Executive Lamont McClure acted on an earlier promise to cut funding for the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission. The budget keeps funding for the commission in line with 2023 levels at $605,000, which is $95,000 less than the commission requested.

“Anything north of that really starts to put us in a position where it becomes necessary for us to think about the value or the benefit of going off on our own,” County Director of Administration Charles Dertinger said.

In a pitch to council asking for the $700,000 it requested, LVPC representatives emphasized the enormous volume of recent development in Northampton County for the group to review — the most it has seen since 2008, Commission Chairman Steve Glickman told council.

Glickman said that includes more than 13 million square feet of warehouse and industrial space — but mostly warehousing — proposed for the Valley in the last year.

The commission received 18 submissions for major projects that meet its threshold for “regional significance” in the past 10 days alone. Of those 18 projects, Glickman said, 14 are in Northampton County.

“We just go where we're needed, and it turns out this year we’re needed more in Northampton County, and I think that will be the case next year as well,” Glickman said.

Lehigh County already has agreed

The commission always requests the same amount of money from Northampton and Lehigh counties. Glickman said Lehigh already agreed to the LVPC’s full $700,000 request.

Council President Kerry Meyers said he “wouldn’t budge” on funding for the group until he knows how much it spends each year on salaries.

“I’ve just got to be able to explain to the people who put my butt in office how I'm going to agree to pay that much more without looking at where exactly it's going,” he said. “And this is not coming from the [county] executive, this is coming from me.”

In general, this year’s budget is “largely the same budget as last year,” County Director of Fiscal Affairs Steve Barron said, and includes spending cuts amounting to 3% in all.

Across departments, the county is contending with increased costs for employee salaries and benefits, and has essentially run out of federal pandemic aid money.

Working in budgeters’ favor, the county’s tax base has grown from last year, and its investments are performing unusually well, thanks to high interest rates.

Barron said when the budget was unveiled this month that the cuts mostly come from legacy programs being phased out, less spending on advertising and other “efficiencies that we've come up with, positions that we have ended up losing through attrition because they are no longer needed.”