Council Opposes Elimination of Farmland Preservation Funding

Efforts to preserve open space have arguably helped to define the character of Lower Saucon Township in recent years, which is why township council's symbolic June 20 vote to oppose the proposed elimination of farmland preservation funding in Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett's 2012-2013 budget was hardly surprising.

Council's vote was unanimous, although council president Glenn Kern--who has been --was absent from the meeting.

Council vice president Tom Maxfield, who presided over the vote, said that Pennsylvania currently leads the nation in the preservation of farmland, which has been funded in the Commonwealth for the past 20 years through a dedicated tobacco sales tax.

In voting on the measure, council labeled the state's farmland preservation efforts an important "quality of life" program.

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Some of the funding generated by the additional EIT (which is on top of a one percent EIT split between and the ) is now threatened by the law that created .

That law----would divert the EIT paid by township residents who work in a defined downtown Allentown district into a special fund set up to help finance the construction of a hockey arena.