Meaning good evening and welcome to the 2021 Bethlehem mayoral debate.

PBS39 and 91.3 WLVT are proud to present this forum in partnership with Lehigh Valley Live and the Express Times We're Coming to you live from the PPE Public Media Center in Bethlehem.

I'm Jen Rehill News Director at WLVT and I'm Sara Satullo reporter with Lehigh Valley Live Jen and I will be co moderating the debate.

You can watch a Spanish language version right now on PBS39 extra and streaming on the PBS39 Facebook page.

The general election is just five days away.

Bethlehem is going to have a new mayor for the first time in eight years.

The next leader will be tasked with guiding the city out of a global pandemic and charting a course for economic recovery.

Tonight we're joined by the two candidates competing for that job.

William Reynolds is a Democrat and high school history teacher who's been on Bethlehem City Council since 2008.

John Kachmar is a Republican who's worked as a county administrator and city manager across the US.

Now we have a lot to cover and we want to get right to it.

But first, a quick note journalists from PBS39 and WLVT are and Lehigh Valley Live wrote the debate questions and the candidates have not seen them.

Mr Kachmar earlier we flipped the coin and you'll lead us off with your opening statement.

You have two minutes.

Thank you.

And I think that channel 39 and LVHN and Lehigh Valley Live a little bit about myself very quickly.

I was born and raised in the city of Bethlehem on Hays Street in the south side at the age of six, moved to the north side of Bethlehem.

I was educated at St Ann's School and Notre Dame High School.

After high school, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and spent several years in the Marine Corps, one of which was in the Republic of South Vietnam.

I was a rifleman, fire team leader, squad leader and field radio operator.

I was a combat marine and wounded and recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Navy Achievement Award with a combat v. After the Marine Corps, I came back to the Valley and you went to Moravian College after Moravian, I took a job with Northampton County and was paid by the United States Department of Labor and morphed into something called Lehigh Valley Manpower Program Private Industry Council and I was the executive director of that organization in the 1970s.

I then became the chief of staff for Congressman Don Ritter in Washington for five years.

After that, the Lehigh County administrator or under David Bausch and after that I went on the road and became the county administrator or city manager for several cities and counties across the United States.

Always under employment contract, mainly because I didn't trust elected officials and whether or not they would keep their word with me and I now find myself in a position of wanting to run for office.

I came back here because this is my hometown.

I wanted to retire here.

I've been watching what's been happening in the city of Bethlehem.

I think there's a lack of transparency there and some relatively severe financial problems that the city is not being open about.

I think we need to solve some of those problems.

There's some integrity issues which I'll talk about later.

But bottom line is I'm starting a political career at the age of 73.

I still have lots of energy left and I still have my eye on the dime as they say thank you.

Thank you, Mr Kachmar.

Mr Reynolds, you have two minutes for your opening statement.

Thank you.

I want to thank Channel 39 for hosting tonight.

I want to thank everyone that's at home watching what is going on in Bethlehem since the closing of Bethlehem Steel has been remarkable.

When I was growing up on Lin Wood Street, Bethlehem could have gone one of two ways and through the resilience of our community and strong public and private leadership, we have taken a direction that almost no other post-industrial city has taken in America.

We've added thousands of jobs or our economy is thriving and most importantly, people want to live in our city.

Families want to send their kids to our schools.

People want to invest in our on third and 4th Street on Main Street and we are committed to creating more opportunities for everybody throughout our city as we exit the pandemic.

We have an incredible opportunity that is before us to create an even more vibrant city.

And as we've knocked on doors over the past 10 11 months, it is clear that there is an optimism that is in our city about what we can become and we need a vision for how to get there.

The good news is it's the same vision that we've used over the past 25 years to recover from the closing of Bethlehem Steel economic revitalization and investing in our neighborhoods, giving people more opportunities, creating a fairer city and building a more sustainable city.

That vision has helped us recover from the closing of Bethlehem Steel helped us become one of the most livable, most sought after cities in America.

And it's what we need to continue.

I want to thank everybody again for their commitment to the city of Bethlehem.

I want to thank W for Channel 39 for helping us out tonight, and I'm excited to talk about the future of our great city.

Thank you, Mr Reynolds.

Now we move on to what we call the lightning round.

Each candidate answering two questions specific to them.

There are no rebuttals in this part of the debate.

There will be plenty of time for that later.

You'll have one minute to answer.

Mr Kachmar, the first question is for you.

You portrayed yourself as the more experienced in this race.

Yet you've never been elected to public office.

Your opponent has had a seat at the table for every major decision in Bethlehem for the past 13 years, while you were out of state.

How can you be ready to take the reins and run this government?

Quite frankly, because I'm used to running cities and counties doing it in one place or doing it and another is very, very similar.

You know, the difference of what is excuse me for being blunt Bucks and what is real when it comes to City governance?

Cities are complex organizations and quite frankly, you can't move from a non-management position to immediately managing a city.

There's some intrinsic problems with that.

I believe it's easier for me to do it simply because I've been doing it.

You know, for a very long time.

The key to the whole thing is we wanting to make sure you show your city has balance and you could be in Georgia, you could be in South Carolina.

Balance is very important.

I work for both Democrats and Republicans in my career and made a point of always registering as ENPI.

While I did that and I was once again a contract administrator.

It's easy to do.

Thank you, Mr Kachmar, Mr Reynolds.

Next questions for you on Scytl on City Council, you have issued several votes on the Martin Tower project and also accepted campaign contributions from the developers in this race.

You've rejected donations from some big developers.

Why the change of heart?

I think one of the things you look at in the city of Bethlehem is one of the things that a separate us is our ability to drive investment.

And what you're looking at with Martin Towers, you're looking at 53 acres that need to get back onto the tax rolls.

It is important that we work to create a balance over there as far as a combination of housing, a combination of commercial and just a property that we're going to be able to look back on and say we were able to help create revenue that helps to pay our bills and the majority of our bills is public safety.

I have never shied away from I've never been embarrassed or I've never wished that I voted something that I didn't vote for and I look forward to in the future, continuing to find ways to invest in our community, work with people that want to invest in our community and draw support.

One of the things that I'm proud of is how much support I have received.

I've received hundreds and hundreds of donations over the years and I think it's about my commitment on both the private and public side as far as what our city needs for the future.

Thank you, Mr Reynolds, Mr Kachmar.

Next questions for you on your campaign website.

You say that you would quote incentivize city employees to do their jobs better.

What did you mean by that?

Are you implying that they aren't giving their all or worse are lazy?

No, hardly.

I've had several conversations ith city employees e been been told the basically the same thing by many of them.

There's some morale problems there when you have a individual who's your business administrator who hires his wife as the parks director and gives her a $12,000 salary increase during a pandemic.

You spread bad, bad morale throughout the entire organization.

You need to you need to work with the employees to let them know that they can trust you and they can trust your management decisions and that they know that you're going to be fair with them and you're going to treat everybody the same.

Thank you, Mr Kachmar.

Mr Reynolds, the next question for you.

The man you defeated in the primary endorsed your opponent today.

Dena Grubbs says you lied in a campaign mailer when you claim to quote secure nearly $600,000 in Covid funding for small businesses.

What specifically was your role in getting that funding?

I think one of the things that you look at the city's done is we've put in connection the way the system is designed.

Money that's come down from Washington similar to Northampton Lehigh County money that comes to the city.

And then it is our job to make sure gets into the hands of the people that need it.

And if you take a look at the people that are in our city and our small businesses and you walk up and down third and 4th Street walking up and down Maine and Broad Street, they would tell you that the city of Bethlehem help them to access those funds.

It's I didn't go to Washington, I didn't pass any of those funds.

I didn't pass any of the things that were passed by the Democrats in Washington.

But one of the things that I think everybody in City Council has done has worked with the administration and make sure that the people in our community understand what is out there.

And that is that has been how we've been able to connect these funds, connect all of these different programs that were designed to help people during the pandemic.

And one of the things you see is a lot of our small businesses that they've come back even stronger because of that relationship.

And if you take a look at our downtowns, the creation of the park lifts the ability of people to be able to have drinks to go in different things like that.

It is working with City Council, working with the city administrator ocean to utilize those federal programs and the state programs to get the dollars into the hands of the people that need them to recover from the pandemic.

Thank you.

That concludes our lightning round.

Thank you both and thank you as well to our viewers and our listeners.

We're glad you're here with us for this live debate between Bethlehem McAdoo.

It's on PBS39 and 91.3 WLVT.

Let's move on for the next round of questions.

You'll both have a minute to answer.

If you want to rebut or add something, just signal us and we'll know you'll have 30 seconds for rebuttals.

Sarah, why don't you start us off, Mr Reynolds?

You touched on this a bit earlier.

Plans for Martin Tower are essentially unchanged since the project was proposed years ago.

A hotel, medical offices, a gas station and an apartments.

Yet how we live and work have changed significantly in the last 18 months.

Is this still the right plan for the site?

I think what we need to do as a community is we need to be invested in how those plans are rolled out.

One of the things that we've talked about recently at City Council is working with our city planning and our economic development departments to make sure that we build sustainable developments over there.

We had a very robust conversation six seven years ago.

What people didn't want to see over there, but one of the things that we need to do and it really comes down to that planning process is how do we create as sustainable a property as possible over there?

That also is fitting the uses.

It is 53 acres that we need to turn around.

There are some things we can do to to connect that property downtown.

But the bottom line is that we need to take a look at each project, each plan that goes in there.

How are we going to create the most walkable?

How are we going to create green buildings?

How are we going to be able to create the type of development that five, 10, 20 years from now that we're going to want to drive by and say that we did that right?

But make no mistake and we talk about budgets, we talk about finances.

That's 53 acres that 20 years ago was paying $1.5 million in property taxes in three taxing bodies.

Last year, they paid less than $100,000.

If you compound that over all of this over the last 20 years, you're looking at tens of millions of dollars that our school district, our city and our county has hasn't gotten.

So we need to we need to work with the developers to get those properties back on the tax rolls.

OK, thank you, Mr Reynolds.

Mr Kachmar, what's your take on the Martin Tower project?

Too much politicalization goes on.

I'm used to seeing planning bodies come and review a project or plan and then it goes to a city council for a final vote.

This was a rather painful process.

I think in the last iteration of it was stalled rather heavy duty over council wanting to change some parking that was facing 8th 8th Avenue.

They wanted to change that parking around the concept of making it a walkable area or using green green building materials.

I have a very, very difficult time buying it because first of all, green building materials don't care, then don't take care of petro hydro contaminants in the atmosphere.

They just add building costs.

If it affects the assessed value and they pay more taxes and their commercial building, I don't have a problem with that.

But the whole process that the City Council went through, they made it very, very political.

The future of building in Bethlehem is going to be green building and it's going to be LEED certified building and it's because it is what we need for both the environment and also to save money.

One of the things the city of Bethlehem has done is we've invested in sustainability measures within the city city facilities and we've saved hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One of the things that our community wants is to make sure that when development is going on in the city of Bethlehem, that it is that it is sustainable, that it is smart growth and that we have buildings that are helping to reduce our carbon footprint.

We've done that internally.

The school district is doing it.

Our major institutions are doing it and it is on us to require our community to do that as well.

Like, I'd like to add something to that.

The whole concept of smart growth came from somebody named Parris Glendening, who was the governor of Baltimore or the government governor of Maryland.

Baltimore Professor.

Great idea.

They just haven't been able to pull it off, except in very, very large urban areas where they can actually engage in walkability.

Bethlehem 2020 plus some square miles.

The whole idea of a walkable community might be admirable, but it's not doable and you need to look at the cost of creating that walkable community.

We're going to move on and we'll move on to the next question.

Thank you both for your rebuttals on that.

Mr Kachmar the city expects to receive 30 $4 million from the American Rescue Plan.

Now the current administration, the Dan Newhouse administration, wants to spend some of it to patch holes in the city's budget holes that existed before the pandemic.

Things like covering some employee cost and other expenses.

Do you think that's the right way to use the money?

Well, the first thing you have to do and I watched the meeting on September 28th.

I watched the prediction of what the tax increases were going to look like over the next five years and compounded it's a 32% tax increase over a five year period of time.

That's not a sustainable number that's too high, especially for some of our elderly homeowners.

But you need to look at the CFR, the Code of Federal Regulation and what you can spend that money for and what you can't spend that money for.

And they were given a very, very bad overview by their staff on that.

That was incorrect.

I've read the regulations.

I've been doing this for years.

They can only spend some of that money for past four pass cost and they have to they have to verify that cost is somehow Covid related or Covid treatment or pandemic related.

They can use some of the money to cover some past costs.

They've got to be careful what they do with that or quite frankly, they're going to lose it.

Mr Reynolds, your take?

Yeah, First of all, we need to think the Democrats in Washington for delivering now those dollars now one Republican voted for those bills to come back to help our cities and states.

So we need to thank Congresswoman while and Senator Casey and all of the Democrats in Washington.

We also need to balance our short term interests what it is that our community needs right now.

I think that answer was pretty telling as far as the idea that those dollars are meant to help us recover from the pandemic.

Part of that is the short term cost of our most vulnerable populations what's happened to them?

But we also need to balance term responsibilities.m or longP If we are, if we are able to save money in the long term, it allows us to invest in our our people.ds, our parks andP We also need to take a look at the systemic issues that the pandemic helped to to make wide like very clear for people in America and work with people in our community.

And finally, what I would say is like we need to listen, we need to talk to the people that are in our community.

It is not just about what people want to do in City Hall and there are aspects of the presentation that from the administration.

I agree with, but there are other things I disagreed with and it starts with that spirit about those dollars about helping the people that were most affected by the pandemic.

Mr Kachmar, I just want to add something I don't disagree with him in terms of helping people affected by the pandemic.

What you've got to do is you've got to be creative with these dollars and you've got to take a look at something that you can do right away that has an almost an instantaneous effect.

And I would say concentrate a fair amount of the money on homelessness.

The CFR actually allows you to buy a motel, OK and convert it to a room by room homeless shelter.

The keeping room by room to prevent the spread of Covid-19 that is probably one of the best usage of that money.

Some of the money they should look at that we have people living under the bridge here.

We need to take care of them.

Mr Reynolds, I would actually agree with part of that.

I think one of the things the pandemic has made worse towards our affordable housing crisis.

If we take a look at what has failed for us, whether or not it's affordable housing, access to the internet and also one of the things that I propose is creating a community recovery fund.

We have had organizations, arts organizations, recreational organizations that lost a year and a half of organizing a year and a half of helping Bethlehem and bringing people in to help define what we are.

That's why people want to live here.

So we need to take a look.

We need to listen to our community.

We need to get out and we need to spend those dollars with the idea of equity in mind that those people that need those dollars, those people that are the most affected are going to be the ones that receive those dollars.

All right.

We're going to get to a lot of those issues in just a few minutes.

Mr Reynolds, I have another question for you.

Just about 30% of Bethlehem population is Hispanic, according to the census.

If you win, will there be more Latino representation in the mayor's cabinet or among department heads for the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to make one of my two employees in the mayor's office a director, a director of equity and inclusion, a bilingual employee that's going to help us to oversee the spending of the pandemic of the pandemic related dollars, but also take a look at our committee for our community for too long.

We have been a community that has been separate as far as identity is concerned, our identity has changed in the city of Bethlehem in the last 10, 20, 30 years.

And it starts with how do we reach populations that we have never been good at reaching before and that's been a failure of City Hall.

And that talk, I think last time I looked at the census, approximately 20% of the population in Bethlehem speak Spanish as their first language at home.

And yet that is not reflective of the services or what City Hall looks like.

We need a city hall every department that is going to have people that reflect what our community looks like and also trust.

There's a reason why people aren't engaged in our institutions like City Hall.

And it's because of that disconnect.

What City Hall looks like is not what our community looks like and that is going to be my priority on day one.

Thank you, Mr Kachmar.

What's your plan to ensure that Latino voices are at the table?

Well, first of all, I think that this city and it predates this administration and goes back many, many years.

I learned this when I was running Lehigh Valley manpower program.

We've had we have systemically discriminating and star Latino community here in terms of their voices being allowed to be heard.

Their needs being met and we treat them as second class service citizens.

When I say service citizens.

You have much better public services in the non-Hispanic parts of this town than you do in the Hispanic parts of this town that I've learned by going door to door, talking to Hispanic people.

And I have several Hispanic friends and have had them for a very long time here.

You've got to open the door.

You've got to be fair.

You've got to look at your departments and make sure that your departments can communicate with anyone who comes in, not just Latinos.

There's a variety of things you can do that I picked up from 9-1-1 services and other places, and there's some very, very simplistic computer generated, interpreted or interpreted programs you can use for talking to whomever you want to.

But when it comes to the Hispanic population, I would make sure that we were we would start a fair and equitable hiring program to Reynolds.

Did you want to rebut?

Yeah, I just want to add.

It's not about computer translation programs.

It's about how do we connect with those institutions in our community?

The best memory school district, the Hispanic Center Community Action all of our churches to find ways to get into places of the community that we have never been before.

And that's what this comes down to.

It's not just about making people come to City Hall, it's about how do we take City Hall out into the neighborhoods?

And a lot of that comes down to the mayor's ability to lead these conversations.

The Beth Tim Murtaugh School District has done wonderful things on the issue of equity.

We have organizations that are way ahead of the city of Bethlehem and we need to work with them.

We need to talk to them and we need to plan with them.

As far as the best way to handle a lot of these issues that for too long have been put in the back burner throughout our community.

Mr Kachmar just I just want to add very simplistic fact.

You know, it's 2021.

Why are we talking about this now?

There should have been happening very, very, very for a very long time and it hasn't been.

And you've been on council for a very, very long time.

Willie.

You know, we all need to step up.

Mr Reynolds.

So then I don't think you've been paying attention to what I've been doing in City Council that if you take a look at our northside 2027 plan, if you take a look at our climate action plan, if you take a look at our communication survey, all of them have been grounded in the idea of equity.

My job teaching Allen High School is I watch systemic racism every single day.

I watch what happens when kids don't get what they need to get.

And I've been an advocate for that and I think that's part of the reason why everybody on City Council supported me is because when you have conversations with them, they all will say that I understand what it's like to be somebody other than myself, and it starts with listening.

It starts with action.

And I think if you like I said, if you'd been here and you'd been a part of these conversations with our Northside plan, our Climate Action Plan, you would see environmental justice and equity are at the top of the list of Bethlehem food co-op, another organization Adamstown, that I've been supportive of from the beginning.

All right, according to the center and Mr Kachmar, did you have want to add one last word?

Why move the Co-op from the south side to the north side, where especially in that neighborhood there is a very small Hispanic population?

You know you got to talk real versus political nonsense.

All right.

Let's move on.

We can come back to this later in the debate.

If you like.

So let's shift gears.

I'd like to get back to this question that you raised earlier.

Mr Kachmar, about housing and people who are homeless here in Bethlehem.

Last year, tents were handed out, hotel rooms were secured and used for unsheltered people in Bethlehem because there wasn't another option.

Does the city need a home, a permanent shelter for the homeless?

Population or for people who find themselves, you know, in a homeless situation?

And would your administration help to find that site?

I absolutely do not have a problem with a homeless shelter, but I think we've got to address some of the causes that the causes of homelessness itself.

A shelter?

Yes, 100%.

I agree with that.

But I think we need to also find out why people are there and why they're why they're homeless and whether or not we can get to the base problem per individual.

I think we need to work a little bit more closely with county social services departments.

Instead of starting starting our own and making the county step up to the fact that there's homeless people that live in this county and both counties, Mr Reynolds, we know that folks who would like to have a permanent shelter have had some difficulty securing a location for that.

Would your administration support that and what do you think we should do about the to support homeless people in Bethlehem 100%.

And that's something I've been currently working on with the administration as far as potential locations within the city and homelessness is also a regional problem.

It is a Lehigh Valley problem.

One of the things we see is we often see the homeless populations that go from east to Allentown to Bethlehem, so we need to take a look at it from a regional point of view.

But we also need we need a a bridge and a shelter in the city of Bethlehem that is connected to all of our organization and that help to transition people from homelessness to find a more secure way for for them to move forward.

I think for too long this has been an issue and I think that the pandemic made the issue worse and it's something we absolutely should take a look at using AARP funds for the money that we got from Washington.

But it's also just something that we need to focus on as a community.

It has been too long for people saying just because it's not my problem doesn't mean that it's a problem.

So absolutely it's a it's been a priority for people in City Council and I think it's something that we're going to we're going to talk about as well in the coming weeks when we start talking about the next year's budget.

Mr Kachmar, we need to link.

I don't find myself in disagreement with him, but I think we got to be a little bit more specific and a little bit more creative.

We've got a link job training with homelessness.

We've got to make sure that people are ready psychologically and physically to move into a job and give them give back some of pride to themselves.

That's also part of the whole way you solve homelessness.

You've got to you've got to be extremely creative and you've got to be very specifically client oriented.

I believe.

All right.

We're going to do one more quick rebuttal here.

We've got a lot to get through to the debate, but Mr Reynolds TikTok City is already working with organizations on that type of stuff.

New Berks County Ministries, Community Action Hispanic Center There are different organizations that the city's working on as far as those programs are concerned.

What they need is they need more energy, they need more money and they need more of a priority from the city.

All right, Mr Reynolds, another question for you.

Recently, City Council approved tax incentives for certain south side developments that include affordable housing.

Yet the same ordinance allows developers to pay a $25,000 per unit waiver fee.

Is that enough money?

And how will that money be used?

It's of course it's not enough money, but it's legally at some point we're only able to get them to pick one of those options.

That was a very big deal.

Nobody else is in the Lehigh Valley is ever tied to any type of affordable housing required into an economic development incentive and that helped to set the bar going forward as far as what we could do like the way the law is in Pennsylvania is, you can't mandate it.

You can't say you have to pay this or you have to build a certain amount.

All you can do is you can tie it to the incentive.

So then it comes down to which incentive do we want people to choose?

So as far as what that number was, was what the administration came forward as far as talking to developers are concerned because we would rather have them in my mind, we would rather have them pay into that fund, take those dollars, put those dollars towards people in our community that needed the most people that are earning less than 30% of the median income rather than having them build a couple of a couple of units that are affordable in my mind, the community benefit of getting those dollars and being able to take those dollars and partner with the private sector far outweighs the value of getting a couple of units.

Thank you, Mr Kachmar.

Do you think it's good practice to create affordable housing zones and then allow developers to opt out by paying fees?

I would rather go for changing the whole concept.

And I know you can do it in Pennsylvania because there's other cities that have done it.

You have to you have to come up with a whole concept of what's known as developed agreements.

And quite frankly, you charge them in Maryland.

If we had people that wanted to come in and build apartment units and we had a lot of people coming into the county, I was in because they moved the headquarters of Navy Ear from the Pentagon to St Mary's County and a total of almost 50,000 people moved in within an 18 month period of time, which is really a very complex situation.

We changed our development agreements with developers if they wanted to come in and they wanted to build X y and Z either single family or multifamily units.

They had to pay for the number of theoretcal number of children that would be coming in.

We made them build classrooms.

You can do the same thing here, but you've just got to you've just got a kid into an affordable housing concept.

And quite frankly, I'd do it in conjunction with the private sector.

I'd make them like the idea.

All right.

We're going to go to the next question, Mr Kachmar.

The Lehigh Valley has been hit hard by Covid-19.

More than 90,000 people have been infected with the virus since the start of the pandemic.

7400 people have died.

Does the Bethlehem Health Bureau have the resources it needs to combat this public health crisis and others that may come down the pike and if not, who should pay for it?

Well, I believe they do not have the ability to handle things.

I think they've done a great job with their inoculations with vaccines.

They've been open.

They've been it's been very transparent.

They're out in the community that are doing a good job.

But there's only a handful of them and they don't have the equipment, the supplies and materials.

I'd take a look at the 33 or $34 million coming in right now and I definitely do a set aside.

The problem is it's a one time shot.

You then have to find a way of funding it forward.

I try to sit down with local health care institutions with the hospitals and I try to work out something with them in terms of helping with the delivery system in our community.

As a backup.

I know they use them for inoculations, but I'm talking about a backup for all public health purposes beyond Covid-19.

Mr Reynolds, the Bethlehem Health Bureau Does it have the resources it needs and who should pay for it if you think they don't?

The Bethlehem Health Bureau has done an amazing job in helping Bethlehem residents get vaccinated over the last 18 months and get out there and help people.

Public health in general is something that the pandemic has made everybody super aware of, that we weren't necessarily on the front burner before we had talked about the issue, but it is something where we need to get people to invest in something that they don't necessarily see the advantage of unless something like the pandemic happens.

So absolutely, we need to take a look at short and long term planning as far as what the Bethlehem health care needs.

My wife, Natalie is a physician and I've seen her work in 14, 15, 16 hour days over the past 18 months.

And you, as she works for Lehigh Valley Hospital and Lehigh Valley Hospital in St Louis, have great relationships with Bethlehem Bethlehem Health Bureau.

But what we need to do as a society is we need to take a look at what are the responsibilities that public health really should have and they have absolutely been expanded during the pandemic and they can't.

They can't recede even when the pandemic ends.

We can't look back and say, OK, we can go back to the way things were before and that might take more investment.

But more than anything else, anything else, it is a priority for us to talk about public health going forward and talk about all the systemic breakdowns that made everything during the pandemic that much worse.

Thank you, Mr Reynolds.

We're going to continue the 2021 Bethlehem mayoral debate here on PBS39 and the Spanish language version on PBS39 extra.

This program is being simulcast on our radio station while VR and streamed on Facebook and on our website at PBS39.org.

Now remember the election is this Tuesday, November 2nd.

Polls are open from seven am to eight pm.

All right, candidates, thank you for participating.

We're going to switch things up a bit now for what we call the crossfire section of our debate.

This is where you get to ask the questions taking turns.

You'll each ask your opponent two questions.

They'll have one minute to respond.

Mr Kachmar, you start.

What's your first question for Mr Reynolds.

Willie?

You have stated the city is in good financial condition, yet you emphasize the city's bond rating as an example of its financial stability.

Once again, I think you have to take a look at the last three years you've raised taxes throughout the last four years.

You have a record of voting for 12 out of 14 tax increases in your career.

Can you name your used bond you always use to bond rating as your go to for?

This is how I can prove we have economic stability.

Pfizer question Yeah, there is that we have economics stability in our city's finances.

Can you name the rating agencies and tell us what two of the three agencies use as the qualifiers for upgrading a city's bond rating standards Standard and Poor's and Moody's?

And let me talk about the city finances.

Bethlehem is in a better financial position than any other city in Pennsylvania.

If you take a look at our financial situation, the fact that we have had over $2 billion of investment that have come in in the private sector, the fact that we have as a city.

If you take a look at how many properties we put it back on the tax rolls, our taxes are lower than Allentown or Easton because of our impressive economic revitalization over the past 20 years, And you don't have to ask me about it.

You decided to move back here after living all over the country where we were when Bethlehem steel shut down versus where we are now as far as jobs, as far as property values, as for short and long term investment.

You look at the economic vibrancy of both the private and the public sector.

Our pension fund is better funded than any other city throughout the country.

We haven't had to sell assets like Allentown has Allentown in eastern half special tax ability to raise taxes because they have such financial problems.

We never even came close to AK 47.

What we do as a city is we make promises to our employees.

Most of them are public safety and we keep those promises to Reynolds of your time is up and it's time for your first question for Mr Kachmar.

Yes.

Did you vote for Donald Trump?

What does that have to do with running for the city of Bethlehem?

Mayor?

I'm not going to answer that question because I think that's a very unfair question to ask and quite frankly, you accused your opponent in the primary being Donald Trump like Dana Group is not Donald Trump Donald Trump like is that so there's no answer there.

Why should I answer it?

Because I'm not a Bridgett Floyd not afraid to say that I voted for Joe Biden.

Oh, I didn't vote for Joe Biden.

There's no way in hell, but I also didn't vote for Donald Trump.

I'll answer your question.

I didn't think either of them are good for this country.

Sorry.

OK. All right, Mr Kachmar, your second question for Mr Reynolds.

My second question is and it's a personal question.

The mayor, the mayor's position in our city is termed term limited to two four year terms.

You are 39 years old.

What office will you be running for when you were 47?

Well, I'm actually 40 years old.

Well, OK.

But I it's I think that's a crazy question.

I'd tell you the office I'm going to run for when I'm 47 years old is whatever Natalie wants me to run for.

She has made a lot of sacrifices for me over the last several years.

She's been working as a doctor during the pandemic.

I may go back to teaching in the classroom, students at Allen High School or a special special group of people.

And I can tell you that right now I want to be the mayor of Bethlehem, but any kind of question about what's going to happen after my time as mayor of Bethlehem comes down to starts with what's best for my family and what Natalie wants.

Good answer, but I think you're a career politician.

OK. Mr Reynolds, your second and final question for Mr Kachmar.

Do you think that Joe Biden won the election last year?

Fair and square?

Nobody's been able to prove anything otherwise.

As a matter of fact, one of my best friends in Georgia is named Brad Raffensperger.

And I think he's an intrinsically honest man who said I can't prove it.

I can't prove that any fraud took place.

That's a good answer.

It's good for our country and I appreciate that.

You're welcome.

Thank you both gentlemen.

That concludes our crossfire round and that segment of the debate.

We're going to continue now with more questions and after that, we'll wrap up with your closing statements once again.

This live debate between Bethlehem mayoral candidates is being brought to you by PBS39 and 91.3 WLVT in partnership with Lehigh Valley Live now just a minute a reminder for this segmen.

You'll each get up to a minute to respond and if you want to rebut something just like you did before, you can signal us.

Sara, why don't you start us off again?

Mr Reynolds the historic Moravian District is in the running to become a World Heritage Site like the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall of China.

That's huge.

As Mayor, how would you support that and what does the city need to do to prepare for a win?

I've had the opportunity to meet with Mayor Dan Chaz and also historic Bethlehem partnership Moravian College and all of our community partners that have been working on this UNESCO's site.

It is an opportunity to be another game changer for the city of Bethlehem.

When you take a look at what it's meant for tourism around the world, and around America, it's an opportunity for us that we absolutely have to find a way to make it happen.

We are a special, special community.

There's a reason why people want to live in Bethlehem and part of it is our historic our history and what people feel when they're walking down, walking down Main Street or walking throughout our city.

So it absolutely is a priority.

We have to talk about the type of investments we need to make, but also what type of what type of message do we need to to to put out there as a city to show that we are the type of community that is on the same level as those other communities and the type of place when you're coming to the United States of America.

You want to come to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Mr Kachmar, what would you do to solidify the case for Bethlehem as an international tourist destination?

I think it's a fantastic idea.

One of the things I would have done is go back in time, maybe two years and make sure that the Hotel Bethlehem got their KRYS expansion like they asked instead of involving politics and parking to interfere with that.

With that process.

I'd love to see an expanded hotel Bethlehem simply because it's in the downtown district.

Not only is it fantastic during the Christmas time, but the historic relevancy of Moravian Moravian College and the Moravian settlement here.

I do everything in my power as mayor to make sure that not only did we do that, but I take advantage of the economic incentives involved in it.

All right, Mr Kachmar, we'll move on.

The police department here in Bethlehem is the largest expense in the city budget $12 million this year on salaries alone.

Now, in the wake of local and national protests and calls for, you know, looking at racial justice issues and policing.

Do you think it's time to look at police funding and Bethlehem or how the department is organized?

Well, first of all, without becoming too technical, this police department is clear certified and that's very, very difficult to get clear certification.

From what I can see, I would rate this police department on a scale of one to 10, eight and a half to nine and a half, and I don't think there's any police department that's a 10, but I think they do a relatively good job.

Would I play with their funding?

No.

What I would do is I'd make sure that the council understood in this form of government that they can tell me who supervises the police department what services they want.

But they should not be telling the police what services they want.

That form of communication is not good.

It's called separation of powers and it's important to pay attention to.

I wish Mayor Dodgers had done that.

The whole concept of defunding the police, I think, is stupid.

Mr Reynolds, do you think that would you support looking at the police department's funding or how the department is organized here in Bethlehem?

In response to those who've raised concerns about racial justice issues, racial justice issues need to be the top of everybody's priority list in the city Bethlehem going forward.

I have never wavered from that.

I think that's super important.

There's a lot of people in the city of Bethlehem my family included that owe a lot to the Bethlehem police department.

My father had a heart attack 10 years ago and the police and a couple of police officers and paramedics got there and helped to save his life and gave us extra years with him because of how good they are at their job.

We as a community, they'll also need to look at how do we keep police officers out of dangerous situations they go into dangerous situations and we need to support them and understand that perspective.

The comparison I've used is it's like you're counting from one to 10.

At 10, we have to we call the police one through nine Fair School funding, recreational opportunities, mental health services.

It takes everybody takes people and City Council takes a mayor, takes a community.

It takes a police department to understand the connection between school funding and what ends up happening with the police department.

We need to find ways to make police officers jobs easier.

We need to have mental health workers that are able to take some things off their plate, which I think that they would appreciate if we do it the right way to work with Northampton County, work with Northampton County Mental Health.

That's your time, Mr Reynolds.

Mr Kachmar, did you?

Oh, I didn't know if you were signaling for a rebuttal.

Well, all I can, all I can add to it is being a police officer in today's society.

It's a very, very difficult job.

Lots of problems.

Lots of personal problems result for a lot of our police officers simply because they see too much and they see too much on a constant daily basis.

I'm a big believer in helping our police make it through the day through a variety of different services for them.

OK?

Mr Reynolds, I think you'll have a lot to say about this next topic.

The city's Climate Action Plan shows at Bethlehem most vulnerable residents, people of color, low income and sick people will be hardest hit by global warming.

How will you address inequality and protect these residents?

One of the things that our Climate Action Plan did and there were 700 people 50 institutions Lehigh Moravian Chamber, the Chamber of Commerce they all wanted to be a part of our climate action planning process and one of the things you heard from both the institution and individuals was that racial justice and environmental justice was at the top of the priority list.

So one of the things that's in our climate action plan is that 40% of all dollars that are invested into our Climate Action Plan go to our most vulnerable communities.

It's one of the things I talked about before about hiring a director of equity inclusion to not work in City Hall, to work in the mayor's office right next to me to lead the way on these issues and make sure that these are a priority going that these are prior to going forward.

One of the beautiful things about our climate action plan too is it's not my plan.

It is a plan that was created by 700 people in our community, our EC, our institution.

And one of the things that we're going to do is make sure that we are listening to residents and that we're finding ways to create a more sustainable, walkable and livable community.

Mr Kachmar, in Lehigh Valley Live article you called parts of the cities Climate Action Plan quote intrinsically stupid.

What's your take?

How would you protect residents from the impacts of climate change?

Functional solutions One of the biggest problems we have is our air quality here.

Probably, probably the single largest climate problem or climate change problem we have is is his emissions and its emissions coming from all the diesel vehicles going through going through the cities.

And quite frankly, from gridlock from cars being stalled and change.

Rutgers came out with a study two years ago that talked about the number of that.

What happens during gridlock?

If you have a child that says Zoom callsMatt Tuerk, their chances of being having an attack are 15% higher.

If you have if you've had a myocardial infarction, your chances in a gridlock car or truck situation is three times higher than normal.

What I would do is put its systems into the city or intelligent traffic systems into the city, keep the traffic moving, keep the emissions down as low as you possibly can.

Green building materials are great, but it doesn't really in the first scope of things, it doesn't.

It doesn't change anything.

The climate action plan of this city is more socialism based than it is anything else, and I think there's some danger in that.

We need to function.

Thank you.

Right way.

All right.

OK, thank you.

We just have to move along for time.

So let's talk a little bit about passenger rail.

The Biden administration recently pledged support for restoring passenger train service to New York City and Philadelphia to the Lehigh Valley.

Do you think this plan is feasible?

Do we need it?

It's a question of who's going to pay for it.

It would be fantastic if we could restore it at one point in time had it.

The problem is rail either light rail or regular rail between large metropolitan areas and Lehigh Valley j