County Council: Bond Money Should Go to Gracedale

Northampton County Council wants to use nearly $1.6 million in unspent money from a 10-year-old bond to help pay to keep its nursing home running.

Earlier this week, preventing the county from selling Gracedale, the publicly-owned nursing home in Upper Nazareth.

Because the county had planned to sell Gracedale, council had only budgeted enough money to fund it for the first half of the year. With the sale not happening, the county is now looking to try to improve Gracedale on its own.

One of the ways to do that could be taking more than $1.5 million from the bond issue, declare the projects that money was supposed to fund as "unfeasible," and move it to Gracedale. 

A resolution introduced at Thursday's council meeting by Councilman Ron Angle would do just that, as well as set up an account that would take any money the county got back from concessions by Gracedale's union workers and any money Gracedale earned and turn it back over to the nursing home.

"Whatever the unions give back stays at Gracedale. Whatever Gracedale makes stays at Gracedale," Angle said.

"Amen," responded a few members of the audience who had opposed the sale. They still jibed at Angle a bit, although not as much as before the primary.

Addressing council early in the meeting, they urged members to -- in the words of one resident -- "work together, and make it work., bigger and better."

“The people have spoken very loudly and have expressed exactly what they want," said Mario Martinez, the leader of the Coalition of Alzheimer's Families, which had opposed the sale. "And we do expect that every single one of you will work toward that goal.”

Council members Ann McHale, Peg Ferraro and Lamont McClure wanted to amend Angle's resolution to remove the part about the bond money, saying that council needed to take its time and review each project before declaring them unfeasible.

Ferraro said she agreed with the idea "philosophically," but added, "I am not comfortable with just shooting from the hip and say 'All this money goes to Gracedale.'"

McClure pointed out that the county ended up in court years ago when it tried to rescind money from a controversial road project in Wind Gap.

But Councilman Mike Dowd said Angle's resolution was simply a statement of intent. He added that he had become "increasingly frustrated" with municipalities not getting their bond projects finished.