How Boondoggles Such as the Bethlehem Co-Op Benefit at Your Expense: Beneficiaries Get a Lot, While Average Taxpayers Don’t Notice the Cost

June 21, 2025

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Open the dictionary to the definition of “boondoggle” and a picture of the Bethlehem Co-Op Market should appear.

This near-mythical retail store at is at least three years behind its planned opening, is in debt and needs more money.

What makes it a boondoggle — a wasteful or inefficient use of public money — is the $3 million of tax dollars that went into this misbegotten mess.

The idea of handing $100,000 in state money and $2.9 million in federal funds to an untested group to open a grocery store is ridiculous to most of us. I hope.

So how do these things happen? It comes down to the cost versus benefits. Very little cost to the many who pay, but potentially a lot to the loud interest group getting the money.

The non-functioning Co-Op went to public meetings, talked a lot (I mean A LOT), and worked politicians including state Senator Lisa Boscola, D-Bethlehem and former U.S Rep. Susan Wild, D-Lehigh Valley. Some members of Bethlehem City Council raved about the idea.

I saw some Co-Op presentations. There was a gap between what they said and reality. Why was the need for a publicly funded grocery store pressing when there are at least five privately owned stores within two miles of my home in Bethlehem?

Why didn’t somebody in government question this? Why at 250 E. Broad St., under three floors of yuppie apartments and near one of Bethlehem’s most-affluent neighborhoods? Hogwash.

Here’s the key. The non-Co-Op got $3 million. With about 1,600 members, that means each member gets a potential benefit of $1,800 from their fellow taxpayers.

Then the cost. Consider the $2.9 million federal grant, add a couple hundred thousand for overhead, and divide by 330 million Americans. Each of us paid just about a penny for the Co-Op. Some of that money was borrowed, so we will be paying for a long time.

This is how countries run up $36 trillion deficits, and it’s a bi-partisan effort.

It also reflects the hard truth that there is no political reward for frugality. Money wins votes.

Maybe the Co-Op will open this year, as it contends. After this terrible start, can it last long? It’s already shifted its mission and changed its name.

Meanwhile, the store, the culmination of an effort that started in 2011, sits empty.

I am contacting state and federal auditors to see if money has been used appropriately. They probably won’t care, but I’ll feel like I tried.

I’ll also try to monitor any new demands for tax dollars from the Bethlehem Boondoggle.

If there’s a lesson to be taken from this, next time somebody wants your money for their pet project, tell your representatives, “Just say NO!”