Lehighton News

On July 3 at 10:50 p.m., Carl S. Lehman, 43, of Jim Thorpe, was driving his 1996 Chevrolet 3500 west on Old Route 115 near Mount Eaton Road in Ross Township, going too fast on the wet road around a curve.

Burglars broke into McGinley's Trail Side Lodge on Route 115 in Blakeslee in the early morning hours of June 26.

Route 895 is closed near Lehighton after a truck crash. The tractor-trailer was carrying a load of residue left over from the steel-making process.

PUBLIC BOG WALKS through the Tannersville Cranberry Bog will be held 10 a.m. today and next Wednesday.

About 25 employees and 15 shoppers were evacuated from the Country Junction store in Bushkill Township today when an antique peanut roaster malfunctioned, causing a fire in a vent pipe, officials said.

When state police charged a Jim Thorpe man with causing a fatal crash last year because he was driving under the influence of marijuana, he faced a three- to six-year prison term.

A violent crash involving a car and a sport utility vehicle in Carbon County last night sent four people to area hospitals.

A state agency has fined a Lehighton-based cancer treatment practice $8,000 for violations in the use of radiation devices at two of its offices last year.

Carbon County Oncology Management Inc. failed to get a required annual calibration test on a medical particle accelerator at its Simon Kramer Institute for Therapeutic Oncology in Blythe Township, Schuylkill County, the state Department of Environmental Protection said Wednesday.

The group also used a new medical accelerator at the Joint Center for Therapeutic Oncology in Lehighton without filing the proper paperwork, the DEP said.

At least four people were hurt after a head-on collision in Carbon County. It happened late last night on Route 443 in Lehighton.

Electricity customers worried about skyrocketing rates when price caps expire starting in 2010 for PPL Corp. and other utilities only have to look at a handful of neighboring communities to see what it's like to deal with hefty increases.

For people who live in Lehighton, Quakertown, Perkasie, Kutztown, Lansdale, Weatherly, Hatfield, Schuylkill Haven and St. Clair -- all of which have municipal-run electric utilities from which they use profits to fund borough operations -- hefty increases are already a fact of life.

Another new hospital rating system -- this one pooling existing data on quality, cost and reputation shows St. Luke's Hospital and Gnaden Huetten Memorial as the area's ''best values.''

The Fountain Hill and Lehighton hospitals were the only local hospitals among seven that scored high enough to make the list, according to a spokeswoman for Data Advantage, a health information company based in Kentucky that released its first ''Hospital Value Index'' Tuesday.

Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Salisbury Township, LVH-Muhlenberg in Bethlehem, Easton Hospital in Wilson, Palmerton Hospital and Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown did not score in the top 25 percentile to rate as a best value, said Carlie Crenshaw, who works for a Nashville public relations company. And no local hospital made the top 100 best value in the country list, she said.

After two years of cleaning cars, organizing dances and selling hot dogs, a group of volunteers dedicated to raising money to repair Lehighton's leaky pool is calling it quits.

The Lehighton Area Pool Pals went out on a high note Monday night at the Borough Council meeting, with treasurer Karen Alboucq and secretary Lyle Christopher turning over a $115,464.60 check for repairs that have started this year.

''We are going out of business as the Pool Pals,'' said the group's chairman, Mark Hoffman.

Can Lehighton, Bangor, Palmerton and dozens of other communities benefit from state grants generated by a tax on Mount Airy Casino Resort?

You bet.

Many of the 25 local and county officials who were at a meeting Thursday in Lehighton to learn about the grant program left planning to apply for myriad projects as diverse as a new police station in Lehighton to improved emergency services in Kidder Township.

''Everybody is looking for money these days,'' Palmerton Councilman Brad Doll said.

With $12 million expected this year from a tax on Mount Airy Resort Casino slot revenues to fund economic development, community improvement and public interest projects in Monroe and surrounding counties, the state is betting there will be municipalities that want a piece of the action.

So the state Department of Community and Economic Development will help them lay all their cards on the table.

The state has scheduled meetings at 10 a.m. Thursday in Lehighton Borough Annex, 3 p.m. Thursday at University of Scranton's Brennan Hall and 10 a.m. Friday at East Stroudsburg University's Beers Lecture Hall to guide municipal and county governments through the process.

Panther Valley School Board has joined its fellow vo-tech school districts in approving a bond issue for a $20.5 million building project at Carbon Career and Technical Institute.

Allentown City Councilman Peter Schweyer recently heard a story about a city woman who was visited by zoning officers for holding more than one yard sale within a year.

It turns out the city doesn't have any specific ordinance regarding yard sales and there's plenty of confusion because of it.

Schweyer, vowing to fix the situation, recently introduce a law that would allow residents to hold four outdoor sales per year.

The proposed ordinance would also restrict ''garage sales,'' ''lawn sales'' and 10 other classifications of outdoor sellings from lasting more than three days. Those who hold yard sales would also not be able to post signs until a day before the event.

PennDOT reports lane restrictions on the following roads in Carbon County: Spruce Hollow Road in Lower Towamensing and Towamensing townships, between Route 209 and Hahns Dairy Road, June 11-13 from 7 a.m. to ...

A Summit Hill man admitted Thursday in Carbon County Court that he spit on two police officers, bit one of them on the finger and kicked out a rear window of a police car in February.

Photos and historical background of the churches that will be closed. A12, A13 When the Catholic Diocese of Allentown announced the impending closure of nearly 50 churches, it raised a practical question with ...

Mark "Tony" Gadsden, 22, of New York, was sentenced June 5 in federal court to five years in prison after pleading guilty to his role in cocaine and crack cocaine trafficking in Carbon and Lehigh counties in ...