Four years on Macungie Council is Enough for Ramsey

The Borough of Macungie is a place where a tiff over police scheduling spills over into lawsuits between the mayor, the police, the borough council and even the district attorney.

After a while, though, this began to grind into council President Guy Ramsey.

This fall, he somewhat reluctantly ran for a second four-year term as a Democrat and then welcomed his own defeat.

On Dec. 19, he ran his last regular council meeting, though there will be a short meeting to adopt the 2012 budget at 7 p.m. Dec. 27 in the Macungie Institute.

“My name was on the ballot,” said Ramsey, who was named council president two years ago.

“I’m putting my house on the market. I came upon this problem after my name was on the ballot and before it could be removed. It was not good timing.

“I believe I will be moving out of the area.”

Ramsey, an employee at electronics company R&D Circuits, said his job is secure and the decision to possibly buy a farm is more of a lifestyle change.

Four years on council and witnessing a legal battle between Mayor Rick Hoffman and Police Chief Edward Harry Jr. that spilled into borough council and even the district attorney‘s office are enough, he says.

Also leaving seven-member council  -- though not necessarily the area -- are Bob Bogert and Dorothy Kociuba. 

“If you’re going to manage people, if you’re going to be a manager and have a good relationship, you must trust each other,” Ramsey said. “From the beginning, the mayor seemed not to trust anybody -- the council, the police chief, or for that matter, the D.A.. That‘s a problem.’’

Ramsey referred to the way he handled the Dec. 19 meeting.

“I did get things accomplished,” he said. “Tonight’s meeting was an example of that. There was a very civil dialogue. There were lots of public comments.

“I think we got the ball rolling. We can all disagree, but we don’t have to have a conflict.’’

Then he listed some of council’s accomplishments over the four years.

“We started down the road of having a formal collection of policies for how the government would work,” he said. “Then we had an informal set of past practices which caused some discontent among different members of the community. We started a dialogue in borough council and the borough office. We began the process of revising and rewriting our ordinances.

“We wrote brand new rules for subdivision and land development. We started the path to work on our code enforcements. We didn’t get that done, but are well on that road. We fixed our sidewalks ordinance, which had turned into a big mess.

“We are preparing now to re-write our zoning ordinance into the 21st century.”

He had some advice for the mayor, the police chief and the new council.

“I‘ve always taken this approach with (Mayor) Rick,” he said. “You can‘t develop trust by being confrontational. You develop trust by being reliable, by being faithful and being honest and fair. I wish we had gotten farther down that road.’’