Supervisors Appoint 5 to Municipal Authority

Tension was strong in the board meeting room at the administration building Wednesday night while the Northampton Township Board of Supervisors debated who should be appointed to the open municipal authority board seats.

The issue was such a hot one that even though it was buried near the bottom of the agenda, Chairman George Komelasky decided to move it up to the first matter after public comment. 

The Municipal Authority Board already had one vacancy due to the death of board member John Long in May, 2009. In addition, four positions were expired, leaving the supervisors with five spots to fill.

Supervisor Vincent Deon, who is the liason to the municipal board, listed the nine applicants and then made his recommendations: Don George, Edward Farling, Marge Weiner, John Jim and Antonio Albano.

Supervisor Frank Rothermel insisted that he believed the people Deon recommended were not as knowledgeable as some of the others they turned down.

"You need qualified people who know what they're doing," Rothermel said.

Except for Supervisor James Cunningham, the rest of the board disagreed with Rothermel's stance and the meeting morphed into a heated back-and-forth debate with a lot of gavel-smacking from Komelasky to try and keep the order and silence a rowdy audience.

"You gotta look at their ability to work with everybody," Komelasky said in rebuttal. "This is a multimillion dollar business and you need somebody with business acumen."

The board voted 3-2 to institute the recommended members, effective immediately. Their terms all end Dec. 31. Weiner's ends in 2011, George's in 2012, Farling's in 2013, Jim's in 2014 and Albano's in 2015.