A Summer Italian Festival is being planned for Main Street in downtown Bethlehem. At the April 1 Bethlehem City Council meeting, 10 East Church St., council member and Community Development Committee chair Bryan Callahan described plans for the festival.

"We discussed the possibility of this festival bringing foot traffic over the summer months to businesses that struggled to get foot traffic during the harsh winter," he said. "It has generated a lot of interest. There are big corporate sponsors on board."

Callahan said that due to the level of interest, the Italian festival will be bigger than originally planned.

Also at the April 1 meeting, council discussed repealing a law that forbids children from the Bethlehem School District to visit video amusement arcades during school hours.

"I don't believe it is the city's job to tell parents where their children should be," said council woman Karen Dolan. "Nor is it our job to tell the schools how to do their job. Why not repeal the whole thing? It seems to be unenforceable. I make a motion to repeal this and leave the job to whose job it is, the parents and the schools."

Council then unanimously agreed to table the discussion in order to gather more information. During the public comment segment of the meeting, Kirk Raup of SMART Lehigh Valley (Suburban Metro Area Rail Transit Lehigh Valley) pleaded for council to consider backing SMART's efforts to bring inter-city commuter rail service to the area.

"Bethlehem is the perfect city to take the lead in this revolution," said Raup. "It is two hours from both Philadelphia and New York city."

Raup requested that city council propose a resolution to create a rail transit authority in order to allow for the inter-city rail service to become a reality. Raup will meet with Mayor Panto of Easton and Bethlehem's Mayor Callahan this month to discuss further.