Mayoral race Q&A: O’Connell touts record of service
The primary election is just weeks away, on May 18, and Allentown voters will select the nominees for mayor.
This week we’re holding live Q&As with the candidates on The Morning Call’s Facebook page. Each day at 11 a.m., reporter Andrew Wagaman will interview a different candidate on why they want to lead Pennsylvania’s third-largest city through 2025.
On Monday, it was Democratic Mayor Ray O’Connell’s turn. O’Connell was appointed mayor in 2018 after his predecessor, Ed Pawlowski, was convicted on nearly 50 corruption charges. In 2019, O’Connell was elected to fill out the final two years of Pawlowski’s fourth term.
A few highlights from Monday’s interview: O’Connell argued that he
“did a very good job steadying the ship” in the aftermath of the Pawlowski pay-to-play scandal. He said he restored employee morale at City Hall and made the tough decision to raise property taxes in 2019 to stabilize the city’s finances; the city ran budget surpluses in 2018 and ‘19. Furloughs, hiring freezes and cuts to nonpersonnel expenses last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic enabled the city government to avoid a large shortfall, he added. With $57.5 million in federal relief funds coming the city’s way over the next few years, it will be able to work toward longer-term financial resiliency, O’Connell said. An independent audit completed in 2019 found Allentown’s health insurance plan premiums are very expensive compared with other Mid-Atlantic cities, and city employees covered very little of those plan costs (as well as the cost of family coverage deductibles). Shortly after entering office in March 2018, O’Connell signed an extension of the police union contract through 2021 that maintained 0% health benefit contributions for many officers. But O’Connell said Monday negotiations were completed before he was appointed interim mayor. He also noted that recent negotiations with the firefighters union resulted in moving firefighters to a PPO plan, saving the city more than $1 million annually over the next five years.
O’Connell said he decided to seek four more years in office to accomplish economic development-related goals outside of the Neighborhood Improvement Zone, the tax-subsidized area downtown and on the Lehigh riverfront. His administration is “meeting with four or five developers a week,” O’Connell said, and he hopes to bring more growth to main corridors in the city’s east and south sides. Asked why he’s better equipped to achieve economic growth than his opponents, O’Connell said, “Because I’m here. They’re not here. I’m sitting in the mayor’s seat.” The retired school district administrator and city councilmember added that he’s in his 50th year of public service to the city and “bleeds Allentown.”
O’Connell vowed in 2019 not to seek reelection this year. But his wife, Mary Beth, has since overcome two cancer diagnoses, and he said his family fully supported his change of heart. At 71, O’Connell is already Allentown’s oldest mayor, but he pointed out that should he win reelection, he still won’t be as old at the end of his term as President Joe Biden is now (78). O’Connell added that he does not plan to seek reelection in 2025.
Asked to make the case for how he restored “integrity and openness” to city government, O’Connell said he’s ensured City Council has ample access to his administration to hold it accountable. He praised the collaboration and dialogue maintained between the executive and legislative branches during his three years in office, and said his administration is responsive to residents’ concerns related to quality-of-life issues like dumping and illegal all-terrain vehicle riding.
O’Connell is committed to hiring police officers to fill existing and forthcoming department vacancies. But following protests last summer of highly publicized incidents of police brutality nationwide as well as an Allentown police incident involving what some perceived as excessive use of force, O’Connell said he has sought to understand activists’ pain. The department works with one community intervention specialist who responds to some 911 calls involving substance abuse and/or mental health issues; O’Connell said he supports adding up to five, and said the police department is working with county, health care and nonprofit officials to reconsider more broadly how it handles nonviolent emergency calls.