April 17, 2026
— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
The Bethlehem Co-Op Boondoggle will meet Monday, so will it set an opening date?
The Boondoggle was founded in 2011, 15 years ago. It has spent more than $3 million of public dollars and is yet to sell one package of organic arugula from its 250 E. Broad St., Bethlehem, Boondoggle Headquarters.
From the website of the Boondoggle, which prefers to be called the Bethlehem Co-Op Market but in reality is a big Boondoggle:
As part of our commitment to transparency, all are welcome to attend our Monthly Board meeting. The next meeting will be offered on Monday, April 20 at 6:30 PM.
We’ll meet in person at NCC’s Fowler Center, 511 E. 3rd St. (room 106) or you can join us online using this link: bit.ly/489Ap0J
Each meeting offers an opportunity for non-board members to ask questions, raise concerns and make comments. If you can’t attend, please send those to us at info@bethlehemcoopmarket.com. **
There has been some work at the Boondoggle recently. Somehow this organization announced multiple opening dates without having a working refrigerator, but that didn’t matter because the Boondoggle didn’t open.
Also, the tube of Pringles extruded potato snacks that sat on a counter at the Boondoggle for weeks is gone. I think that improve what PR people call “the optics” of a store promoting healthy options. See an important note below about Pringles.
Now to be fair: The Bethlehem Co-Op Boondoggle is just a Baby Boondoggle when compared to other Boondoggles.
Da Vinci is a big name in history, so it’s fitting that the Da Vinci Science Center is a big boondoggle.
The Da Vinci center spent many millions to move from the campus of Cedar Crest College, only to bumble along and not draw as many people as it did at the college. The Da Vinci Boondoggle spent $75 million, much of it public money, to build on Hamilton Street. Da Vinci took millions of public dollars but doesn’t hold public board meetings.
Its solution to an immense shortfall in attendance: work with Discover Lehigh Valley to bring people to downtown Allentown. I’d like to think they were joking about that, but they weren’t.
Verdict: Boondoggle.
Then we have Channel 39 / PBS 39 / Lehigh Valley Public Media or whatever you want to call it, which took $40 million from its endowment (public money) over five years and for all we know, burned it. Some of that money went into pompous press releases, some to building a staff of 80, and some to big salaries for bad performance.
The staff is now 27, a third of what it was.
None of it went to me, nor did I watch reruns of something called Poldark, so I didn’t benefit. I’m in the clear on this one.
Here is the compensation of the top four officials in 2024, when LVPM ran a huge deficit. The numbers are from IRS Form 990, the tax return for non-profit groups:
— Tim Fallon, president and chief executive, $299,682.
— Yoni Greenbaum, chief content officer, $264,785.
— Andrea Cummis, chief technology officer, $224,094.
— Arthur Troccoli, chief financial officer, $212,459.
All four are gone, and while we can figure out where they went, can anybody say where the $40 million went, or what it was used for, or who benefited?
Verdict: Boondoggle.
So the Bethlehem Co-Op Boondogglers will meet Monday at 6:30 p.m. Details are above. If I’m around, I’ll listen in, as their unappointed unpaid and unappreciated publicist.
Their meetings are actually well-run and normal except when people start talking about “targeting millionaires” for money. More money, more money to waste.
And now, the big finish: Pringles.
Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) invented Pringles in 1968. That took years.
Pringles are not really a potato chip but more of an “extruded snack.” Hmm, that sounds tasty, sort of like something made at Victaulic.
They were marketed as “Pringle’s Newfangled Potato Chips” when I was a lad and we were all intrigued to try them once, but they weren’t my favorite extruded snack. They are what they were made to be: consistent.
Pringles are made from a mixture of dried potatoes, starches, flours, salts and seasonings, according to Wikipedia. That dough is shaped into a “hyperbolic paraboloid” shape and fried.
The brand is now owned by Mars Inc.
— Disclosure: I own shares in Procter & Gamble.
— Second disclosure: I am not a member/owner of the Bethlehem Co-Op Boondoggle.
Boondoggle On!
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 