Fate of Macungie Borough Manager's Job Still Undecided

Fliers delivered door-to-door over the weekend urged Macungie borough residents to attend the Jan. 17 council meeting to “chime in “ with support for Borough Manager Chris Boehm who some fear is about to lose her job.

And so they did. More than 50 people packed the auditorium at the Macungie Institute, and the greater part of the two-hour public portion of the meeting was devoted to residents who spoke of her work with the Farmer’s Market, the 150th anniversary celebration, her perpetual assistance with right-to-know issues and more.

But even the interested people who stayed through the more than three-hour executive session that followed the public portion will have to wait till the next meeting on Feb. 7 to find out whether Boehm still works for the borough.

Upon returning to the auditorium, where the audience had dwindled to a dozen or so people, Council President Guy Ramsey said, ”We now have a strategy to meet with Chris and conduct a civil and clarifying review at the next meeting.”

Much of the footwork behind the groundswell of support for Boehm was credited to resident Bill Drudy who feels it’s unfair that Boehm’s performance is even being questioned.

Nobody will say what the problem is with Boehm’s job performance, Drudy says, but it’s well known that several members of council have problems with her work.

“They’ve told me I need to change my management style,” Boehm says, “But they haven’t told me how.”

It’s true that not everybody has the same management style, she says, but she sees her coworkers as her team, and they all work together to keep the borough running.

At times, she says, she has even served as code enforcement and zoning officer, but fortunately the borough has recently hired Brian Nixon to fill that job.

Boehm has been Macungie’s borough manager for the past seven years, and was assistant to the previous manager, Mick Seislove, for six years before that.

She was also the assistant to Emmaus Borough Manager Bruce Fosselman who now serves as Lower Macungie Township Manager.