There’s good news and bad news at the Lower Saucon Township Council. The good news is that neither Councilmember Banonis nor Carocci is running for re-election in this cycle. That guarantees that neither of them will be on Council until, at the earliest, January 2028, on the assumption that either of them choose to run in 2027 and are elected, an unlikely possibility given their track records of the last 4 years. We’ll be happy to keep reminding LST residents of those track records.
The bad news is that we are stuck with them and their man-baby tantrums until their terms end on December 31, 2025. The April 16, 2025, meeting was a perfect example of their childish behavior. They set a new record of delaying and disrupting the agenda until the meeting had stretched to 7 hours 56 minutes and 39 seconds. In other words, an entire workday.
This is, of course, nothing new. They’ve been pulling this nonsense since they lost the Council majority in January 2024. They’ve been piling lies upon lies upon bullshit so that meetings get longer and longer. It’s time to discuss the harm this is doing to the Township.
Residents should have an expectation that their elected Councilmembers conduct themselves in a mature and well-behaved manner, treating each other with respect, and addressing the concerns of the Township efficiently and honestly. Likewise, members of the Council should treat residents of the Township with respect and dignity. We have seen none of that since Banonis and Carocci lost control of the Council in January 2024.
I’m not going to detail all of the bad behavior. If you want to see for yourself, feel free to view their disgusting actions in the Council YouTube videos. Pull up any one since January 2024. It never stops. I just hope you have a strong stomach. Frankly, my 9-year-old granddaughter is better behaved than either of them.
What I will outline is the harm that their behavior has caused the Township.
Residents by and large don’t come to meetings anymore so that they don’t have to subject themselves to this performative nonsense. Likewise many residents no longer even view the YouTube videos because it is almost impossible to understand what is being said as they talk over other Council members, call people names, talk out of turn and generally follow none of the rules of decorum one would expect at a public meeting.
The end result of this behavior is that residents aren’t aware of what’s happening which is exactly what they want to have happen. Five years ago, before I began writing Saucon Shenanigans, there were similar problems like this – not of bad behavior as much as of a lack of communication of what was happening in the actual meetings. Very few residents attended; meeting “minutes” were long, tedious and didn’t really meet the definition of minutes. There was no concerted effort to share Council happenings with residents. Now, of course, there are NO approved Council minutes, the last ones having being approved for the October 16, 2024, meeting. This coming Wednesday the minutes from November 6, 2024, are on the agenda for approval. One wonders how accurately Councilmembers can remember back that far. Add to that the fact that the transcripts that you can find online with the YouTube videos are often unintelligible.
Some nights, residents with issues before Council are kept waiting and waiting because of the disruptions to the agenda, often giving up before their issue can be addressed and having to come back at a later time.
Another unfortunate addition to the meetings is the addition of partisanship to discussions by Banonis and Carocci. At Saucon Shenanigans, we believe that, especially at the local level, it is not helpful to introduce partisanship into the mix. Most local issues do not have a partisan component and the most successful municipalities approach problem-solving by soliciting suggestions from the public and council members, discussing their merits and reaching a decision based on the best solution, regardless of what political party proposed it. Until last year, that was largely how the LST Council conducted itself. I very seldom heard discussion or arguments that revolved around the political party of the Council member. However, beginning in 2024, that all changed. Banonis and especially Carocci go out of their way to attribute statements or proposed solutions by other Council members to their being “Democrats.” Likewise they’ve adopted many of the MAGA behaviors – projection (accusing others of what they themselves do), name-calling, complete disregard for rules of procedure. All of this leads to more division within the community by injecting this unnecessary partisanship.
Starting in the beginning of 2024, the current Council leadership had tried to provide additional opportunities for public comment. However, the increasingly antagonistic behavior of both Banonis and Carocci as well as a group of residents who are clearly aligned with them made it impossible to continue that way. Some residents found it necessary to comment on every single agenda item to deliberately lengthen the meetings. Some also used public comment periods to go off-topic and rant at Council members rather than deal directly with the appropriate agenda item.
All of this has seriously degraded the body politic of LST. And while I usually cover the content of Council meetings, I’m not going to take the time to detail the contents of the April 16 meeting. You can watch the YouTube video if you have 8 hours of your life to waste.
PRIMARY ELECTION ENDORSEMENTS
What I am going to do is offer Saucon Shenanigans’ endorsements for the upcoming primary election on Tuesday, May 20. As you know, Pennsylvania has a “closed” primary system, so you can only vote for the candidates of the party in which you are registered.
While there is no direct way to prevent this horrid behavior by the current Council members since PA law provides no way to shut them up, we can choose carefully the candidates we vote for to replace Banonis and Carocci.
Democrats
Hunter Gress – We should be happy that we have young people like Hunter who live in the Township and are interested in being active in the community. Hunter is a volunteer fireman and has been since high school. He’s aware of the challenges that municipalities have in fielding an all-volunteer fire department. He has attended Council meetings in the past and before the Council finally agreed to install a video system, Hunter could be counted on to handle the meeting livestream when Saucon Shenanigans wasn’t available.
Chad Heimbecker – Chad is an active member of the Township Environmental Advisory Council(EAC). His background in biology and computer science as well as his work experience in IT and the roadway safety industry have led him to focus on “evidence-based decision making, critical thinking and empathy to help foster a sense of pride and ownership in our community.”
The only thing I’ll say about candidate Gary Gorman is that if you are opposed to landfill expansion, his position on that issue is very murky and you might not want to take a chance on how he might vote.
Republicans
Kathy Pichel-McGovern – Kathy is an active member of the Township EAC, serving as Secretary. She is also Vice-President of the Lower Saucon Historical Society and President of Citizens for Responsible Development-LST. A third generation LST resident, Kathy is a certified registered nurse practitioner, working in the medical profession for over 40 years. She and her husband also run a successful beef farming operation: Pichel-McGovern Farms, LLC.
Curt Balch – Curt serves as the family homemaker and manages his family’s 200-year-old homestead. He is a veteran of the US Army and holds an MBA that focused on strategic cost analysis and system optimization. He has also served on multiple charitable boards aiding the cancer and special needs communities. “Curt is devoted to the principles of frugality, small government, and personal liberty. If elected to council, Curt is committed to applying those principles for the greater benefit of the community.”
If you don’t like what we deal with now with the two Republican members of Council, you will probably want to avoid voting for Cheyenne Reiman. When I reported that the Council had to dial back public commenting because of the behavior of some residents who just ate up time for no purpose, I deliberately did not name them, hoping that perhaps knowing that they had caused the problem, they would stop behaving like spoiled brats. That obviously has not worked. Reiman is one of those who caused the change in the commenting policy.
You can see the kind of behavior she exhibits in this video from December 18, 2024. She is rude, aggressive, defiant of the rules of public comment. In this video which is difficult to hear, she expresses her objection to supporting the Hellertown Library.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxMcRudyGUCW_PNxs9oYQnxFfWBdEI44Z9?si=HO2dks3IPHOUM5WB
She has also expressed objections to the Compost Center and the Hellertown Pool. In other words, a giant step backwards from the progress we’ve made in the last year and a half. Do you really want to go backwards?
In addition, she’s a real estate agent which raises the question how many times will she have to recuse for conflict of interest on zoning? Purchase of property? Other types of property issues that come before the Council on a regular basis?
Likewise you might want to avoid voting for Donna Louder. While it’s true that she was previously a Council person at least 5 or more years ago, her current political signs say “re-elect Donna Louder.” While that’s technically true, and perhaps she’s just being frugal and reusing past signs, it implies she’s currently a member. She’s not.
Of more concern with Reiman and Louder is the fact that support materials for both of their candidacies have been paid for by Responsible Solutions for Pennsylvania, a PAC underwritten in this election cycle by Waste Connections, the owners of the landfill. As of May 13, Waste Connections had donated $50,000 to Responsible Solutions. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that’s an exorbitant amount of money to dump into a primary election for a township council.
The two promotional pieces below were also the work of Responsible Solutions for Pennsylvania.
Again, I would ask you. Do we really want to go backwards?
Choose wisely on Tuesday.
Primary Election Day Tuesday, May 20 Polls open from 7 AM to 8 PM
Next Council Meeting Wednesday, May 21 6:30 PM