Town Hall Meetings on Library Referendum: This Week

Parkland Community Library's political action committee will host two town hall meetings on Monday to answer questions on its proposed new $13 million library and the Nov. 5 referendum to fund it.

The meetings will be held at 1 and 7 p.m. at the North Whitehall Township Building, 3256 Levans Road, North Whitehall. There will be town hall meetings in South Whitehall Township next week.

Library board President Karl Siebert and library board Vice President Barry Cohen will give a presentation on the new library, which the board has been hoping for years to build on Grange Road in Upper Macungie.
The Nov. 5 referendum will ask voters to approve a higher tax in support of the library. The tax has not been raised for 15 years.

The referendum asks for a .2978 mill tax. If approved, residents would pay $29.78 per $100,000 of assessed property value to fund the library.

Here is what else is happening in and near South Whitehall this week:

• Parkland High School's Pumpkin Chuckin' contest returns for its second year Tuesday at 3:15 p.m. Students and staff members will compete to see who can throw pumpkins the farthest. 

• The Parkland School Board meets Tuesday at 7 p.m.

• The Lehigh Valley Association of Realtors will hold a Property Tax Elimination Forum at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel & Conference Center, 300 Gateway Drive, Bethlehem. Economic expert Jason Horwitz will provide a summary of proposed legislation, results from Realtor-funded economic impact study, and a comparison of tax rates before and after reforms. The forum is free to LVAR members and $25 for non-members. To register, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/lvar-publicaccess.

• Orefield Middle School presents its fall play, Robin Hood, Wednesday at 7 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $5.

• "The book was better" is a pretty common refrain when a novel gets turned into a movie. It's the subject of the Books Into Movies discussion Wednesday evening at 7 at the Parkland Community Library, where the topic is Nicholas Sparks' The Lucky One.

• Are you a knitter? Join the Knitting Circle at the Parkland Community Library, which meets Thursday at 1:30 p.m.

• David Cook, rock singer-songwriter who rose to fame after winning the seventh season of the reality television show American Idol, appears at the Musikfest Café inside the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks, Bethlehem, at 8 p.m. Thursday. A special VIP event, which includes a meet-and-greet with the artist begins at 5:30 and costs $72. Regular tickets are from $22 to $32.