A New Candidate Has Joined the Race!

Hi Everybody--Terrific news!

Dennis Lieb has joined the race for West Ward rep on City Council. If you don't already know Dennis, you might remember him from many of our canton meetings, the tall guy with glasses that always seems to know what he's talking about. Dennis is a life-long resident of the West Ward, and a committed activist for the neighborhood and for Easton. He plans to begin his campaign with a series of listening sessions throughout the neighborhood, and will create his platform specifically from residents' concerns. It's so great to have an actual race going again for this position that will be so improtant to our neighborhood efforts!

The text of Dennis Lieb's press release is below:

Today, Dennis Lieb is announcing his intention to run in the Democratic primary for Easton's West Ward City Council seat.

He has resided in the West Ward for 48 years, has been a homeowner for 22 years and a landlord for seven. Dennis has worked as a Realtor for Prudential Paul Ford in Downtown for the last 14 years. He was previously an architectural designer for The Architectural Studio's Easton and Allentown offices for four years and still freelances in that field.

Dennis has been involved with civic activism since 1999, including the Easton Heights Revitalization Partnership (EHRP) which led to his involvement with Easton's first Weed and Seed TALL Team in 2001. He and a small group of other TALL Team members reformed the Weed and Seed program in 2003 resulting in state changes to the program guidelines and in Nadine Loane's ascension to the leadership role.

Dennis is currently active with the West Ward Neighborhood Partnership's Physical Quality Sub-Committee and serves as the Urban Ecology Program's Easton Heights Canton representative. He formerly served on the Boards of Director's of Easton Heritage Alliance and The Alliance for Building Communities; a Lehigh Valley non-profit, affordable housing organization. He was also an original member of the Sustainable Business Network of the Lehigh Valley; an organization dedicated local economies: people, profit and planet. Dennis recently hosted a presentation by Paul Marin - held last Fall at Third Street Alliance and attended by over 100 people - that explained the Lehigh Valley's efforts to bring passenger rail back to the region in the near future.

Past involvements include being a founding member - along with Bob Freeman, Charles Elliott, Lynne Holden, Steve Glickman, Tanya Kewley, Robin Porter and Donna Carney - of the citizen ad hoc committee to rewrite Easton's zoning ordinance. This committee was formalized by the city and resulted in Easton's New Urbanist zoning document; the first of it's kind in Pa. for a city of Easton's size. Dennis also brought civic design critic and author James Howard Kunstler to Easton in 2003 to speak at Lafayette College about the failings of suburban sprawl and the benefits of good urban planning practices for small cities. This lead to the citizen movement that allowed the new Social Security building on S. Fourth Street to be redesigned to good urban planning standards. He most recently was involved in the fight to prevent the ill-fated Riverwalk condo/bus station/parking deck project from being built with Federal funds in the Delaware River floodplain. Because of this action - undertaken with many other dedicated citizens - Easton is not now stuck with an empty parking deck, 140 unsold condos and untold debt service problems during the worst recession in decades.

Dennis plans to create a platform of citizen-driven initiatives based on a series of listening sessions he plans to hold with the public over the coming weeks. His focus will be on rebuilding the local economy by supporting local entrepreneurs, rehabilitating the physical qualities of Easton's neighborhood streets through innovative planning, enforcement and design methods, re-instituting a legally functional Shade Tree Commission and supporting formalized citizen input processes at the earliest stages of project development.