Bethlehem City Council will fill one vacancy among 10 potential council members on Tuesday.
The vacancy was created after J. William Reynolds won the election for mayor and subsequently resigned from the council.
The council will vote on the replacement at the 7:00 p.m. meeting on Tuesday, February 1 at City Hall, 10 E. Church St., Bethlehem.
The city published cover letters and resumes from each candidate on the city’s website. The information below about the candidates is taken from these source materials.
Basil Bonilla
Bonilla was an intern for State Senator Lisa Boscola and US Senator Robert P. Casey Jr. and served on the Bethlehem Area School Board for four years. He is a member of the Bethlehem Democratic Committee and the LGBTQ Advisory Board of the Democratic National Committee.
Darian Colbert
Colbert is executive director of the Allentown-based Cohesion Network, a nonprofit organization that runs leadership programs in schools. He is a former LEAP instructor who has matched former Northampton County Jail inmates with employment agencies. He is a volunteer group facilitator with the Lehigh County Juvenile Probation Program.
Edwin Corado
Corado has been the area manager for Walmart’s e-commerce distribution center in Bethlehem since 2014. He leads a team of more than 40 employees. He speaks English and Spanish.
Michael Cunningham
Cunningham has been a homeowner in Bethlehem for 10 years and manager of technical infrastructure for Northampton Community College. Previously, he was Manager of Information Technology at ArtsQuest. After serving in the US Air Force, he moved to the Lehigh Valley in 2005.
death Dietrich
Dietrich has lived in Bethlehem for more than 10 years. In 2015 he founded the Friends of Bethlehem PA Facebook group. The group has about 11,000 members. He is a senior project manager at Sana Commerce. He volunteers with ArtsQuest, the Celtic Cultural Alliance, the Downtown Bethlehem Association and the Southside Arts District.
Wandalyn Enix
Enix was Professor of Education at Montclair State University from 1984 to 2012 and is now Professor Emeritus. She was a social studies teacher in the Bethlehem Area School District from 1969-1980 and executive director of Volunteers of America in Allentown from 1980-1984. He is past President of the Bethlehem Branch of the NAACP.
Scott Hawk
Hawk has been a Bethlehem resident for 12 years and prior to that lived in Lower Saucon Township for 18 years. He retired in 2021 after a 34-year career in cybersecurity and enterprise technology. He previously served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts.
John Marquette
Marquette established a charitable foundation to restore Archibald Johnston’s historic mansion in the township of Bethlehem in Housenick Park. He worked in this area as head of the US Census. Raised in the Lehigh Valley, he moved to California and retired to Bethlehem in 2010.
Allison Michael
Mickel is a professor of anthropology at Lehigh University. She is passionate about reaching out to disenfranchised communities and has volunteered for POWER Lehigh Valley and Lehigh Valley Stands Up. She has worked as a judge in Lehigh County elections.
Josh Ressler
Ressler works in technical support for Lutron Electronics. He became an Eagle Scout in 2004. The pandemic made him reflect on the need for the community to come together to overcome difficulties and hardships.
An eleventh candidate, Anna Zawierucha, also initially applied. A former Northampton Area School District math teacher, she said she stepped down “to support the potentially historic nomination of a black community leader for city council,” citing Enix.
“As someone who works for representation, racial justice, and a fairer future for our city, I cannot in good conscience stand in the way of the progress and historic realization of the dreams of so many members of our community who have fought for fair representation since decades,” she said in a letter announcing her support for Enix.
Comments are closed.