5 Things to Know About This Week

Congratulations to and all the rest of you Bethlehemites in Packers Nation. Your team overcame a lot of injuries and adversity to bring the Vince Lombardi Trophy home to Green Bay.

Enjoy it now because next year it’s coming back to East Rutherford, N.J. What? You expected me to say South Philadelphia?

Steelers fans, what can I say? Three turnovers really did you all in. But I don’t need to explain that to you. You’re Steelers fans, which makes you some of the most pigskin-savvy people in the universe.

Take heart: Pitchers and catchers report in eight days. What’s that? You’re a Pirates fan? Well, uh ... there’s always the next Head and Shoulders commercial.

OK. Time to snap out of our Super Bowl hangovers. It’s Monday morning and a new week has begun.

The Bethlehem Area School Board will hold a special meeting tonight at 6 p.m. for the purpose of adopting its state-mandated preliminary budget.

We emphasize the word preliminary because Act 1 has made for a Byzantine and confusing budget adoption process for school boards across the state. And there has been a lot of misinformation about what the school board actually intends to do, or at least

The proposed tax increase currently stands at 6.16 percent, not 14 percent as some other media outlets and a state legislator have suggested in the past week. And that proposal is not anywhere close to final.

It is the estimated maximum amount the board can increase taxes assuming that the state Department of Education approves revenue-generating exceptions for items such as employee pension funds and debt service, which Act 1 specifically allows school districts to pursue. Otherwise, the maximum amount would be 1.7 percent.

For their part, school board members have been adamant about coming down from the 6.16 percent proposal by the time the final budget must be adopted in June. By that time, the district expects to have a better idea of how much money the state will be providing to school districts in its basic education subsidy.

Of course, the news there is not looking very positive. Gov. Tom Corbett’s decision, , to freeze $387 million in state spending for the rest of this fiscal year – a large portion of which is in education – is bound to come up in conversation. The mood will likely be gloomy, if not panic-stricken.

The Bethlehem Township Commissioners will be holding their semi-monthly meeting at 7 p.m. at the township municipal building. The agenda is light.

You can expect some minor traffic delays if you are driving along Easton Avenue between Elizabeth Avenue and Jennings Street during the day today and on Tuesday. PennDOT crews are scheduled to be making some repairs.

The same holds true on Wednesday for Freemansburg Avenue between Willow Park Road and Farmersville Road from Wednesday through the end of the week. On Route 33, PennDOT is planning to install road reflectors between William Penn Highway and Interstate 78 on Thursday. There could be shoulder restrictions.

Construction at the south end of the Hill-to-Hill Bridge continues.

You can expect to wake up Tuesday morning to a light coating of snow. But smile. The National Weather Service is saying that is likely to be all the snow we get for the week. Earlier forecasts of another Nor’easter blast for Thursday have now been pulled off the table. Forecasters are expecting that storm to blow out to sea.

That means there should be no weather related concerns to prevent you from enjoying dinner at your favorite Bethlehem restaurant. Bethlehem Restaurant Week has been extended through Thursday because of all the rotten winter weather we got last week. So you can choose from 27 restaurants in and near the city to enjoy a multi-course prix fixe meal at prices ranging from $10-$20 for lunch and $10-$30 for dinner for four more days.

On Thursday afternoon, the Bethlehem Planning Commission tackles an ambitious agenda. It is scheduled to hear a zoning law waiver request for the signs that will be a part of .

It will also look at a lot consolidation plan and waiver request for a new back office development for the Majestic Realty portion of former Bethlehem Steel land. The .

Finally, the board will hear the land development plan for the at Linden Street and Johnston Drive.

We’ll be spending at least a small portion of the next few days pondering the question that Ozzie Osbourne asked during his Super Bowl commercial last night. What’s a Bieber?

Have a great week.