County Council - Regular Meeting

public hearing to order. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence. Ordering in progress. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right. Roll call, please. Miss Lawrence. Mr. Hos, Miss Krishnowski here, Mr. Lascavage here, Mr. Lombardo here, Miss McDermott here, Mr. Perry, Mr. Sabatino here, Miss Smith here, Miss Stevenson here, Mr. Thornton present. Mr. Willow here. Thank you. We'll now have public comment on the proposed ordinance authorizing the Secretary of Transportation to acquire right ofways necessary for the Water Street Bridge project. Any public comment? I have no slips up here. Any public comment? Is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. All in favor? I opposed. Meetings adjourned. We'll restart at 601. Thank you.

All right, everybody. It's 6:01 p.m. I'd like to call the voting session to order. We've already had the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence. Um, roll call, please. Miss Lawrence. Mr. Haw. Mr. Kushnowski here. Mr. Lascavage here. Miss McDermott here. Mr. Perry, here. Mr. Sabatino here. Miss Smith here, Miss Stevenson here, Mr. Thornton here, Mr. Wovich here, Mr. Lombardo here, 10 of 11. Thank you. We do have one uh ceremonial proclamation. It is from the Luzern County Bar Association's 175th anniversary celebration uh which we had uh earlier last week. Whereas Luzzar County Bar Association was established in 1850, making it the fourth oldest bar association in the United States. And whereas Luzer County Bar Association has played a vital role in promoting justice, upholding the rule of law, and fostering the professional development of its members for 175 years. And whereas the association has served as a beacon of legal excellence, providing invaluable support to the legal community, engaging in public service initiatives, and contributing to the overall well-being of Luzern County. And whereas throughout its rich history, Luzernne County Bar Association has been dedicated to encouraging high ethical standards, enhancing the administration of justice, and advocating for the rights of all citizens. And whereas and the members of Luzar County Bar Association have demonstrated unwavering commitment to their profession and community, embodying the values of integrity, compassion, and service. And whereas it is fitting to celebrate the significant milestone and recognize the contributions of the Luzernne County Bar Association to the legal profession and the community at large. Now therefore, we the Luzernne County Council do hereby proclaim June 18th as Luzzar County Bar Association Day in honor of the 175th anniversary of the Luzar County Bar Association and commend the association for its dedication and service and encourage all citizens to recognize the

importance of the rule of law and the vital role of our legal professionals. Thank you. Okay. Are there any additions or deletions from the voting session agenda? Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor? I opposed. The agenda is adopted. We'll now have public comment on voting session agenda items. I do have two slips up here. First, I have uh Mr. Quinn. All right. Yep. Uh here representing Beaverbrook. Um only if there's any questions. regarding the RPA extension. No other public comment. Thank you very much, Mr. Griffith. Good evening, council. Uh, agenda item number two. I understand the need for this lease and the concerns of the court, but we need to provide more due diligence on the lease on the document and the impact to the taxpayers. First uh concern that I have is the resolution does not is not correctly drafted where it states the dollar amount. the one spot that says three $24,300 and then it's spelled out $25,783. So in your resolution it needs to be corrected if you so choose to adopt that resolution. Um the resolution on the agenda is um the dollar amount that we're charging I think is a little bit excessive that they're charging us. I just think that if this council would um get the real estate committee to possibly sit down and do a little bit more due diligence on this lease agreement. I know Councilman Lascavage brought up the issue about the drive-thru thing, which was really a good thing, and they took that out of the lease. There's some other things in there. They were going to pay property tax. If the property tax goes up, the council is going to be responsible for any property tax increases over 5%. I

think that's excessive. Exhibit A is not in the agenda packet for us to see. Uh it's just a blank page that on my on the agenda, so I don't know if it didn't copy correctly, but the state reimbursement is only for the base rent. So, anything extra and above that, we're paying on our own from the taxpayers's pocket, which is difficult. When you think about snow removal, we're going to have to pay. Any kind of uh renovations, we're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on that building to renovate it to suit the courts, which is probably is something that we need to do in order to make that building work for the courts. However, if we're only going to have the building for five or 10 years, we're going to have to be stuck with either purchasing it at the end or losing all that renovation, which I don't think is a good spending of the money. Item number seven is the request for the city of Wsberry for the loan. The concern I have with that is, you know, the the city of Wsbury needs to get a UDAG grant to um or UDAG money somewhere else or U C CDBG money to to do that. County shouldn't be in the loaning business to loan people money for for things of that nature. Wendy can get it from the uh CDBG money. Um, and I don't even know if the UDAG interest is eligible for that because UDAG money is supposed to be for dilapidated properties and uh renovations of that kind. So, I don't even know if that's an available uh expense that we can use that interest for. And item number 11 is for the veterans real estate tax exemption and it's it's in a violation of Pennsylvania Constitution Article 8 and the Office of Laws Legal Opinion. Shouldn't even be on the agenda. There's ways to make this benefit available to the veterans and I think it's worthwhile. Absolutely worthwhile. But I don't think to violate the state the state constitution is the way to do that. Let's fix it some other way. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Anybody else for public comment in the audience? Oh, Mr. Mr. Carr. Yeah, Jason Carr. Uh,

Merles Inlet, South Carolina. I was compelled today to come to this meeting by Brian Thornton. Uh I first this morning I sent everyone on council uh an email regarding the lease for uh uh over in Kingston on Market Street. It it seems as though uh or the feeling that I got I own about probably $10 million in real estate. So when I read the the documents submitted today, I it instantly began calculating and and and reading and understanding what information was left out. So I think that the county manager is trying to deceive the public uh as to exactly how much this lease really is. Uh if you look at the document that I sent you this morning, uh 303 Market Street is leasing for half the price that you're paying uh in this proposed lease tonight. And uh I just would like an explanation as to why. Uh Romelda left out a square footage uh price per square foot. She left out the costs that are associated with the buildout uh accommodating the standards that the county wants. And I I just don't understand why that was left out. I feel that both the council and Rilda are trying to deceive the public. Uh especially since we're paying double double the amount. And I believe uh from the email that we got today, Brian Thornton agreed with me. Uh if we look real quickly uh as to the loan to the city of Wilsboro, let's take take for an example, most people don't realize the city of Wilsboro city council is the fourth fourth highest paid in the entire state. Uh, and I was wondering if council went to if county council went to city council and asked them maybe possibly to decrease the

benefits and the money that they're paid uh in order to lower the the loan that you feel that you have to give them. Uh, for for instance, let's take uh Tony Brooks for example. Councilman Tony Brooks, he receives a a $1,500 a month salary. He receives $450 as a health care buyout for not taking the health care package from the city. Uh we pay as taxpayers of Wuksbor $375 a month uh for his dental care. When he retires in three years, he'll receive a $1,000 a month pension for the rest of his life. And if we take that and with the remaining four other councilmen uh that are that are there that take these similar benefits, that would be a cost savings of $258,000 over the fiveyear term of the loan that you're offering for $500,000. So what I'm saying is I think you can offer maybe $250,000 to the city instead of your card. Your time's up. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Uh, I did have another slip that came up before uh uh I'm not sure if this is for public comment for the agenda. Mr. Hall, good evening everyone once again. I'm here um I don't know why I am here because you know it's sad we shouldn't be here for for vets. You know vets should be first. When I joined the military back in the 70s, I joined because I love this country. When I got hurt, busted up, rod in my back, almost lost my leg. I didn't sign up for all of that, but it happened. You know, just like now, we just bombed another country. What's going to happen

if we go to war again? Are these vets going to go through the same thing we we're going through now? I lost my son in Iraq. You know what m what what what much more do I have to do? I moved to this town eight months ago. I lived in Georgia. I lived in Jersey. I was tax exempt here. I guess you got to be almost dead to get tax exempt. I don't know. I don't know. You know, it's sad. It's really sad. If it wasn't for us, y'all wouldn't even be sitting here. Y'all wouldn't be sitting here. these, you know, we fought for this country, man. We gave we we sign that paper for our life, you know, and when you sign up that paper, that means you willing to give up your life like my son gave up his life. It shouldn't it should be an open andsh shut case, man. It don't make no sense. It don't. For years after I got hurt, I had to fight for my benefits and my rights. I finally got my 100%. Then I get here, it's like it's monopoly money, you know, and you guys, I know you gota budget, you got to save money, but not for the vets, man. Don't do it to the vets. Like I said, you see how we bombing other countries. What's going to happen when Russia and North Korea get together? My kids going to have to go to war. It's going to be another draft. What's going to happen then? Come on, man. We supposed to be together. White, black, SP, I don't care what it is. If you're an American, you're an American. Fight for this country. And that's what I signed up for. I got hurt. I'm here. I shouldn't have to go through that. Should be tax exempt. I did my time. My son did his. He lost his life. Come on, guys. We should should be open and shut case.

Thank you, Mr. Hall. Anybody else for public comment in the Go ahead, Mr. Fitzgerald. Uh my name is TJ Fitzgerald, Newport Township 2. Uh the one on the agenda is the 500,000 to the city. Uh I don't think we owe the city anything when we asked them uh during election time that if they could pull the meters and give us a break. They told basically told us to pound sand. Um they don't help us. And then the other thing is is that uh last meeting that I had in Newport Township, uh Mr. Thornton and Mr. Lombardo came and Mr. Thornton did explain to us about he saved how many millions of dollars by changing from one bank to another and we thank him for that. However, if we're getting no interest off this, what is the cost of that? The cost is I actually called what W just earlier than uh just before and Rob O'Donnell figured it out. He goes even at an interest bearing at 6% that's 30,000 a year out of 100 me years. That's a person's salary. So I say do not give the money to the city. Let them do it themselves. They're big boys. And save the money for this gentleman. Give it to him. Give it to people like him. People that work. You know what? That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Troy. Sam Troy, Wilsburg City. I I want to comment on number seven. Uh first of all uh I am I strongly urge council to I assume you're going to vote on this tonight the loan he just mentioned to the city of Wilsburg uh 500,000 or whatever it is. Uh I had a couple other questions too but uh let me just comment that um bad behavior

doesn't justify uh condoning in form of loaning money. When I say egregious behavior on the part of the mayor and council in the city of Osbor in terms of reckless spending. Now, when I go into the bank, let me digress just for a moment. If I go into the bank and I want a loan, right, what are they going to check? I mean, if they don't know me from Adam, even if they know me from Adam, oh, you're a nice guy, Mr. Troy, but before we give you the, you know, $5,000 or $10,000 loan, we got to know a little bit more about you. What do they check? Credit report, right? credit standing and how much money I have coming in due to employment or whatever. I I don't understand. I'll tell you one thing about the city of Wilsburg. They are terrific at a lack of transparency concerning their finances. Before you guys grant this loan, I urge you to I urge you to uh assess try to get more information to to um the word is uh look closy's finances. For one thing, what is their credit standing? Nobody seems to know. I ask officials there, including the mayor, I get no response. If the credit standing has fallen, which I think is is a certain possibility, why would you go ahead and give this kind of these kind of terms to the to the city, let alone this much money for something that they listen, they have a $50 a household sewer sewer fee that they're collecting, plus they get um money from uh the rainwater fee. some of that rainwater fee is diverted towards all the participating municipalities. I think everybody here knows that and that's a shame. So, they have enough money and they they could get the county does not have to go forward with this loan. Uh I just want to mention one example. Several years ago, I think this was before home rule was enacted. I'm not sure when the Sterling Hotel was still standing this council or these the commissioners at that time I can't remember if we had a council to be honest loaned a certain uh company that by a

person the name of Judge Schoal Mr. Griffith can verify this um5 million or was it $6 million to assess the sterling and to see where we were going to try to salvage the sterling from be from the wrecking ball and guess what the money disappeared and Mr. Shovel, I guess, and his company pocketed the money. The county was not able to recover that. That's an egregious example that I urge the county to look at before they go ahead with this loan. In short, I don't think the city of Wilsburg deserves it. I urge this urge the county council hill to put this at least uh on the back burner to table it and and look more closely at the city's finances. Do I have more time or Thank you, Mr. Troy. No, your three minutes is up. Thank you. You can speak again at the end of the meeting if you'd like. The amount of time should be expanded. All right. Thank you. After all, we pay the expenses around here. Thank you, Mr. Troy. Anybody else for public comment in the audience? All right, we have uh a Zoom hand up. Mark R. Mr. Chairman, this is Mark Rabbo of Hazelton speaking. Can you hear me? Yes, we can, Mr. Rabbo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. with regards to the uh loan to the city of Wilsair for uh the sewer lines uh through the interest on the UDAG money that I found for the county. I am in strong disagreement with uh loaning the money for three reasons. Number one, Wils Bear City has gotten bailouts from the county taxpayers for years. And I'm not talking about like a h 100,000 here, $200,000 there. I'm talking in the terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars in in the low low

in in the high six figures, low seven figures. Okay. So for uh any member of council and the county manager to say that oh Wilsar's the county seat and that's that's supposed to be inoculating the city from any egregious mis misappropriation or mispending of county taxpayers money is an insult to the collective intelligence of all county taxpayers. That's number one. Number two, if Wolspair didn't have any other option, I would be I would be reluctant to to support it with with conditions. But there's another option, as I said, Mr. Chairman, at the last council meeting that Wolsair City could apply for UDAG money through the Commonwealth Finance Authority of DCED as an emergency loan uh through the state representatives, uh Mr. Eddie Day. Pashinsky and Marty Flynn could sponsor an emergency loan uh through PennBest as the vice chair and the other member of council knows uh Penvest loans are given for water and wastewater uh upgrades, line upgrades and infrastructure. That's a 1% fixed interest loan. So why is this why is the UDAG money necessary? the interest on the UDAG money necessary for political expediency because it's an election year. That's second uh reason why I'm against it. The third reason is the fact that Wolsair City has, you know, they could they could apply like as controller Griffith said through their CDBG money and other monies that they can get through federal through federal money and they could have applied through for ARPA money

through the county. when you guys were uh discussing how to allocate and aortion the ARPA money. So for those three reasons, I am strongly against giving this money and I don't care about political platitudes that looks very county seat and that and that's all I have to say. Mr. Chairman, please vote don't vote against vote for don't vote for this vote against it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rabbo. Okay. Any any other people for public comment? Anybody else? All right. Hearing none, we'll move on. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the June 10th, 2025 voting session? Second. Motion and a second. All in favor? Opposed? Minutes are approved. Moving on to the agenda number one. Motion to adopt the ordinance authorizing the Secretary of Transportation to acquire rights of way necessary for the Water Street Bridge project. So moved. There's a motion and a second. Roll call. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Lascavage, yes. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Lombardo, yes. Unanimous. Number two, motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a lease agreement between Luzern County and JDP Realy Incorporated for office space for Lozern County Domestic Relations. So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second. on the question. Anybody? Mr. Valovich? Uh, I just wanted to ask, do we have to change the resolution to reflect the right number? Yeah, we we just correct the the wording of the um the dollar amount. Okay. So, I'd like the proposed amendment to correct the wording on the dollar amount. Uh, so the correct dollar amount is 25,783. Correct. It is. That's the correct. Okay. So, I the words are incorrect. Okay. So, my motion is to adjust the

words properly to make it equal. There's a motion and a second to adjust the language to uh fit the proper uh term dollar amount, which is what again? 25,000 $783. The number figures the correct monthly payment. Okay. There's a motion in a second. Roll call on the amendment. Mr. Lavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Mr. Thornton. Yes. Mr. Will. Yes. Mr. Mr. Krishnowski. No. And Mr. Lombardo? Yes. One. It passes. Thank you, Mr. Thornton. Yeah. On the original motion with the lease itself. I uh stand steadfastly against this. Uh the lease price is way way too expensive. It doesn't reflect market values in the area. Um I researched a lot of properties out there. uh equivalent even closer to the Berminsky building what which is what they were looking for. Nice very nice office properties um for a lot less uh expense. Also, since taxpayer money is certainly going to be used for a portion of this lease over the 10 years of the lease duration, um I think an RFP should have been issued. Uh and let a lot of different properties submit their price and and and meet the specifications or qualifications that would have been demanded in the RFP. I I don't think that was done at least uh nobody has spoken about that in the past month or so that we've been discussing this. So uh I rise in uh stiff opposition to this motion. Thank you. Any other public comment or not public comment, I apologize. Any other comments from council members? Uh Mr. Hine Marsh, I I see you're on the

Zoom call. Uh would you care to Yes, Chair. Yeah. Would you would you care to uh speak on any of the concerns that were raised either in public comment or by council members? Particularly my one of my concerns that I I've uh you know been having over the last few days is that vast difference in what the price per square footage is for the uh for the building and other buildings in the area. Okay. Uh well, based on our examination of the other properties uh that we uh indicated to council were reviewed, none of them met the spec specifications and the needs. uh some of the comments that were raised uh uh earlier during our work session uh such as the initial term going from 15 years based on our discussions at the previous council work session we were able to get that term down to 10. Uh as someone in the public comment indicated uh the landlord is now willing to remove and pay for the total cost of removing the ATM. Uh so again, thank you for the discussion during the work session. It helped us to better negotiate this lease. Uh I'd also like to thank uh members of council who took the opportunity uh to come and take a look at the current situation in our family court building in the Berminsky building as well as the main courthouse to better understand the needs and what we are trying to accomplish. Uh, I also like to thank them for taking the opportunity to review the property uh with myself as well as attorney Lisa Parade, our de uh director of domestic relations who's in the audience this evening. Uh my apologies. I'm away with my grandkids uh that I was not able to be there in person. Um I think it's difficult uh to make a

decision uh based on some of the comments and Mr. Thornton making a comment uh when he has not been or observed any of the operations currently undergoing in family court in the Binsky building uh to make a statement that he's looked at other properties uh that would fit not knowing what our needs truly are. Uh there was another comment in the comment section uh that uh we were going to be paying additional funds for the buildout. The cost of the buildout is reflective in the lease itself. There are no additional costs for buildout and I believe there were some concerns uh that other than the base rent uh no other costs were going to be uh submitted for reimbursement and as that is not correct. If I miss something please ask me. I'm happy to address it. Miss Parat is in the audience. We'd both be happy to address any concerns that you have. Uh moving forward, I think there's been ample time to review a lease by the county administration as well as the Lazern County Council. Uh and that's about all. Thank you, Mr. Him Marsh. Mr. Paratti. Yes. I I would just like to remind council that Paul is correct. I think it's on anything. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Anything that we submit to the state is reimbursed to the county at the rate of 66%. So he's correct. Those additional expenses can be submitted to the state in addition to the payment of the lease. And the cost of the buildout are part of

the lease, rent, the rental costs. Okay. So that that's a misconception that I don't know where that's coming from. They agreed to lower the term. They agreed to take to take out the $3,600 for the uh night depository. Um, you know, they have been very cooperative with us. I think I I want to also thank those of you that took the time and made the effort. I don't know how you can make an informed decision without seeing the place. That simple. without seeing what how much space we have at Burminsky and how much space we do not need currently because my staff is has diminished um and how much Family Court needs our space. When we when you came to Market Street, you saw how it was perfectly laid out. Very little renovation needs to be done with the exception of the back room. We have parking. We have accessibility. All of the other properties that we looked at had none of those. So, I think it's important for those issues to be recognized. Miss Smith. Uh, thank you, Chair. Um, you mentioned before that the renovation costs are built into the lease and it's my understanding that that is why the term is so long and that is why the rent is what it is. So, that would make up for the difference in the amount per square footage. Correct. Okay. Um, it's also my understanding that they are leaving us free of cost without being built into the lease a substantial amount of office furniture and exactly you saw that. I did I did towards beautiful cherry furniture that they're leaving, conference tables that they're leaving, um, whiteboards that they're leaving. Anything that that is there currently which was owned prior to uh, the bank leaving is being left for us to take. file cabinets. And I don't I don't

think I picked up on this in the lease. Um but things like snow removal, garbage, that would be our requirement, right? The snow removal is going to be something that the the Delbals will be responsible for. Okay. So that's not a cost for us. Well, it will be a cost for us. Yes. Okay. But it will be worked. It'll be reimbursible by the state. By the state. Mhm. What other what other costs can you foresee that we might encounter that would be reimburseable by the state besides like snow removal? I mean everything pretty much is worked into the monthly number. So utilities utilities are separate. We have to pay utilities, right? So that would be a cost, but that reimburse would be costs that we be we state we submit to the state every month a monthly statement of expenses itemizing all of our current costs. We currently I call it rent. They call it cost of ownership. We currently pay $20,668 at the Burinsky building which is a county owned building. So to to say that $5,000 and some dollars more is is a big deal I don't I don't get it. And historically, the state put in a few million dollars to help build Brinsky, didn't it? The state built Binsky. How? To the tune of to the tune of over a million dollars. Right. Okay. And we still get rent from them. Correct. Which is something the state has issue with to this day. Right. Okay. which we don't want. We certainly don't want a strained relationship with the state courts considering the they've been quite good to us. I have to say that we would not be able to run our

court system, I don't think, without the state courts money. Correct. Right. Um, okay. Thank you very much. I thought there was one more thing, but I lost it now. Thank you very much, Mr. Lavage. So just because some of us didn't go on the tour, some of us went by the building and looked at it on our own time because I work out of the county. So I did go down and look at that building. Did you come inside? I looked inside. Okay. Did you Well, go ahead. Would you let me please speak? Go ahead. And I looked at the building and and the front of it decent. It's a facade in front of an old building, if you will. Behind that is, I think, a lining business. Is that what that is behind it? Are you talking about Market Street? Yeah. Behind what? It was a bank. Right behind the bank, the connected building behind it. Behind the bank. It It's one huge extension. Used to be a car dealership. Behind the bank where we would be located is a uh an aut school for autistic children. And is there also a linen business behind there? Because the day I was there, the night I was there, a tractor, trailer, and a straight job truck pulled in there into that parking lot, went out back. So, my point is, we're we're talking about the safety of the kids and all of this. And if that other business is behind there, which I'm sure they're open during the day, what about a kid running out in front of a tractor trailer? And I don't I personally don't buy the fact that kids coming into a court are offended by seeing people in handcuffs. I find that statement offensive because I'm gonna tell you why. There's a lot of issues in this country and there's a lot of disappointment. So to think that you're going to protect kids just because they see somebody in handcuffs, that's not a reason to lease or rent a property at a much higher rate. Well, can I explain? First of all, Mr. Lascavage, you're

mixing apples and oranges here. We do not have we will not have a courtroom within the domestic relations building. We traditionally do not see children. We see the parents of children. I'm not going to tell you that occasionally a child doesn't come into the building, but it's not you. You're thinking of family court. Brinsky has will have two courtrooms, maybe three. They see a lot of children, a lot of traffic. You saw that you people when you took the tour, you saw there were children. We traditionally do not have people in handcuffs other than when my enforcement officers pick somebody up and those people are taken right to the courtroom. In this situation, they will be taken via vehicle whenever they're picked up to whoever our family court judge is going to be or our our support court judge is going to be. Right now, it's Judge Salivant. So, yes, we bring them in our building, take them upstairs, and that's it. But to say that you people are seen with handcuffs, no. In this building, yes. And we have very little child traffic in our building. So this what we're we're se going to be separated from family court. Family court is where you have an issue where you need the space where we need to get out and they need to have our space so that they can be able to more amendably deal with children. Have a playroom which is what the part of the plan is. Have an area where children can be separated from people. Have a separate PFA area so they don't have to experience what they're currently experiencing right now. I mean, it's literally, for lack of a better word, a show up on the third floor. So, the other thing, too, is we are going to lose the income that we get paid. So, it's kind of like a double whammy. I know you said 66%. Correct. But I I do understand that every time the state gives a raise, which is yearly, right? I'm not employed by the state. I understand that. I'm I'm talking about the court system. Every

time the court system gets a raise, let's call a 5% over three years. You're talking a salary raise. Yes. I've never received a 5% raise. I'm just giving examples. Okay. But here here's the problem I have. We've been told for Well, with all due respect, if you're going to give examples, they should be realistic examples. Mr. Lcavage, I don't have that number off the top. take offense to the fact that you think kids should be subject to criminals. I have the floor. Do we always get 100% of the reimbursement we're due from the state? Because it's my understanding that the salaries go up, other items go up, but yet we're froze at whatever it is 8% 9% reimbursement and I think we're supposed to get like 18, which we've never seen. I I got to be honest with you, I don't know what you're talking about. What are you talking about? 18% reimbursement. We re get reimbursed for everything we spend 66%. That has not changed in several years. We give the county we give the count our domestic relations gives right now the state or gives the county $60,000 every month from our incentive account. We have two accounts. Monies that we receive as incentives and monies that we receive as reimbursement. They're kept separately in the general fund. Okay. $60,000 every month comes back to the county from our incentive fund. In addition, we pay $20,000 $668 a month in rent for Binsky, 6138 for our Hazelson lease. That gets all paid back to the county. So, I think, you know, I think without that le as as Miss Smith said, without

the state's funding, it's going to be tough. And I'm just I agree with Mr. Thornon. I did the same thing. I pulled up many properties and honest to God with commercial real estate like the Fourth of July on the computer to pick whatever color building you want. And the one that caught my eye was on Pier Street. That's a beautiful building right over the bridge. Which one? Right on the left as you're heading into Kingston. The whole building's empty. No, it's not. The building was purchased in the first floor. Uh the the folks who purchased it are moving in the second floor, which is not enough square footage uh for the domestic relations operation is available for lease. Well, then it was just leased because when I looked it was the whole thing was available. Correct. Now, this is not something uh Mr. Chair, if I may. Go ahead, Mr. High Marsh. As I expressed during my presentation with Miss Par at the work session, this is not something that we've taken lightly. We've given a list of properties that we reviewed that we felt may meet the criteria for our domestic relations operation. Uh you know, which included sufficient parking for the public, a good location where the public will be able to find us, uh and a safe and reasonable location, uh which the uh property on Market Street needs. The renovations are being done. The county was involved. The county's engineer was involved in putting the renovations together. They are included in the lease buildout. Again,

I cannot stress enough that this was not taken lightly. Miss Par is absolutely correct in the amount that's reimburseable uh that we have moving forward. And I take again I take offense to your comment about kids seeing people in handcuffs. That is not the best practices of the courts or the court system for that to be happening. They should not be. And we as a court system and members of Luzernne County should be doing our absolute best to do what's right for our children and family in Lzern County. Well, I I disagree with you because when I was in school, they had a program coming around our high school. You know, it was called Scared Straight. They brought people in that were criminals. And you know what? That's probably why I was never in trouble. Thank God because those people would scare you enough that you never wanted to get in trouble. So, not every I'm thankful that you were never in trouble. But there are a lot of children and families that come into our court system. Uh, and I wish that wasn't the case, but what we're trying to do here is in the best interests of those folks, those families, those kids, and this is the absolute right thing to do as a county, putting our best foot forward in doing what's right for them. All right, Miss McDermott, this state has guidelines that everything has to be followed. So, it's not just the county engineer. So, again, looking at the buildings, I I toured domestic relations where it's at. I tooured the new building. The due diligence was done. They did a lot of work looking They don't have cash to come up with to put any more improvements into any of the other buildings. Again, any of the improvements, as little as they are with the new building, are into the uh the lease, the monthly lease. So, they don't

have to come up with any more cash or anything else to do it. But again, I toured it. I see that there's too much too much Roman uh Raminsky building. Yeah. And then one on Market Street is uh going to fit them. You also have seen the security concerns that we face with regard to the state. Locked doors, bullet resistant glass, not So that's a big thing. State guidelines. That's important. All right. Mr. Thornton. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, Miss Parat, I just want to say for the record from day one, I told Mr. Heimar's here over a month ago, I am absolutely in favor of the move out of that building for the obvious reasons. Uh, it's needed. It's necessary. So, I don't want to be reccharacterized here tonight is I'm against moving out of that building. Um, my question back then, four weeks ago, was the same as it is now. Uh, tell me why specifically only this building will work. I wanted to know, and you started to uh touch on it here a minute ago, what are the specific needs that Mr. High March referred to a few minutes ago that that are required for during this move that only this JDP realy building can fulfill. What are those specific needs that no other no other that no other building could could fulfill? Only this one could. What what and I'm going to just jot them down. So what are those needs? I'm not telling you. Well, let's let's go ahead if you don't mind, Miss Baratti. Let's let's start with with parking. We need to have ample parking for our customers. And how much is that?

Right now, we need well over 50 uh spots. Over 50. Uh right now we pay for 70 which we don't get to use because they're used by the public free of charge. Okay. Okay. What we need is a safe area for transactions, a safe area for docketing, as Miss Paratt indicated, behind bullet resistant glass, certain things within domestic relations need to be segregated, as she indicated, locked doors. And this is all part of the buildout that's happening. The good thing about this location is uh that its former tenant uh was a financial institution. So the layout itself uh makes it a good location uh for some of these things to be accomplished uh relatively easily. Okay. And uh my second question because taxpayer dollars are actually going to actually be used over the 10-year period to uh loser and county taxpayer dollars. Normally we issue an RFP because we are using taxpayer money, local taxpayer money. Um, I I'm wondering why no RFP was issued in this case by your department, your agency, and outlining these specific things that Mr. Himar just elaborated on. Why was there no RFP issued? An RFP for what? Uh, we need a building. Here's what we need it for. Here's the parking spots we need. We need segregated areas. You put

it out to the public. you might have got 10 20 valid uh answers to the request for proposal and and and then you go look at those buildings but rather than uh your agency or department rather than just kind of finding your own or picking your own buildings uh I don't know why that's why the public that's why government uses RFPs to safeguard taxpayer money to make sure uh due process was done in that regard. Uh, I just wondering why that nothing like that was issued. Explain to me what the difference is if we go and look at buildings versus putting it out there and somebody shows us a building. Well, you would have much more variety. You would have competition of pricing because we are spending taxpayer dollars. Um, let's get this straight. You you guys aren't spending taxpayer dollars. We are the 11 of us. What are we spending taxpayer dollars on? The state is reimbursing. I I I don't I'm not agreeing though that the state is reimbursing 100% over the next 10 years for every cost and expense in that building. I just don't agree with that. I don't think that's going to happen. So, I'm just wondering why an RFP wasn't used. Number one, based on what experience, Mr. Thornton, that you think that's not going to happen? Well, you didn't you did not issue an RFP, did you? No, we didn't. But I'd also like to say that members of the administration uh gave us some properties to examine which we did which are included on that list. Okay. All right. That's the answer then. Thank you. Well, no. I mean, what I'm saying is members of the administration were included on some of the visits that we had to some of these properties. Okay. Thank you. And at no point in time was that even discussed or brought up.

All right, Mr. Sabino. Uh, Miss M. Paratti, has the state inspected the site that you want to lease? They have not. No, they won't. They won't. We've had several teams meetings, but they will not discuss ordering anything or even, you know, coming in to have their IT uh people look at it until we have a signed lease. And you know, I can understand that they've given us pretty much cart launch to say, "Yes, send us a copy of the lease if and when it's signed and then we will start ordering. We will send in our IT." So, they're they're on it. County it has been terrific. They've come over, they've seen it, they were very impressed by the fact that Market Street was a prior bank and has pretty much high-tech um equipment. Uh the the motherboard as they call it. I mean, I'm not an IT person, but they felt that the the IT room was pretty adequate and was much better than they thought it was going to be. So, the state was happy to hear that. Any other questions by council members? Go ahead, Mr. Lavage. Is the food trailer going to stay in the parking lot there? It's my understanding, and I don't want to be quoted because I won't want to speak for the Delbals, but they lease or they rent space to the falafel guy on the corner. Uh whether or not he'll be staying is something you'd have to ask them. I mean, I personally don't have a problem with it. Cars in and out, taking up parking spaces there. I I've visited the site. There's not that many. There's not that many people that visit him either. I've been there as well. just it's doesn't get a lot of traffic and he's way over in the corner separate from we we have plenty. Do you think that gives a professional look? It's, you know, I I can't speak to that. There's a restaurant across the street. I'm not talking about across the street. I'm talking about what we're renting.

Well, it's not in the parking lot per se. And to clear before it was brought up again about 100% reimbursement. It's not 100. It's 66. It's 66%. Correct. was missed before bespoke 100. And going back to my last statement, what I meant was with the judges and the support in the courts, we were supposed to get 20% reimbursement from the state, we get five. That's where I was going with that. So, we don't always believe the state in that regard is where I'm going with this. I can honestly say in the time that I've spent at domestic relations both as the master and the hearing officer and as the director the state has never reneged on any reimbursement has remained the same. They have been extremely consistent and extremely cooperative with us pretty much. I may say you reached out to the state because initially there was some concerns about funding cuts. Correct. Uh can you speak to that briefly? With with the onset of the new presidential administration, we all received a letter that there were some going to be obviously concerns with regard to funding cuts. We were assured that the state that the child support program was going to proceed as usual and that we would be kept a breast of any changes. To date, nothing has occurred. The only changes that we have seen are within the DHS program which re affects us remotely. Doesn't affect any of our funding. It affects people coming into us. So I I have to go with that. I can't I can't give you any more of a concrete answer. To date, nothing has been intimated that this is going to happen, that we're going to lose funding. We haven't lost funding. Last year we got several reimbursement checks as we

normally do. We got five last year. Normally get we get them we get four. State is very prompt with their reimbursement and the county gets paid as per always. Any other questions by council members? Miss Smith. See Miss I don't think she has a question. Oh I'm sorry Britney. Um, how long has domestic relations been paying rent to the county? Since, well, I call it rent. It's not rent. It's cost of ownership. County does a cost allocation plan every year and we are assessed a portion of that based on our square footage. Okay. Um, they've been doing that since the building was built in 1988. Okay. Um, and of the other spaces that you looked at, is this the only one that the rent included renovations? We never went that far with the other buildings. We never got to the extent of negotiating a lease. So, I can't answer that question because they weren't appropriate because I mean we we looked at several buildings but the problem was they needed renovation and we don't have the money to renovate it and the county didn't want to put up the money for the renovation. Okay. So, I think something that's just not being fully understood is just how much renovations are needed in order to make this specific to your use. I also don't know that it's being understood how important and what kind of work domestic relations does and why we don't think that child support will get cut. I mean, as a practicing attorney, I I'm in domestic relations a lot and I know how

invariably this state does not permit one to skip child support payments. It is one of the most important in my eyes. It seems like from the way that it's reimbured by the state, it seems like it is one of the most important parts of the court system from the state. Um, domestic relations has abilities that literally no other function of the court has. They have are more equipped to find people simply because they want them to pay child support than most police officers, frankly. Am I wrong? No. So, I think what we're losing here is the amount of the rent that is being put towards renovations because as controller Griffith pointed out, if we were to spend any money on renovations, if we didn't buy that building, we would lose all that money. But here, we're paying over time for the renovations, arguably, and we have been given the right a first refusal to buy it. Am I wrong? That's correct. You are correct. And for example, I don't know if anybody touched on this. There's quite a bit of renovations needed. Correct. For example, you need to build out in the front to include a public restroom. So, there needs to be not only walls built, but also sewage lines installed. I can say that that building requires the least amount of reserv renovations as compared to some of the other buildings we looked at. Okay. And none of those offered to include rent or include renovations to your knowledge. You may not have gotten that. No, the renovations would have had to come from a lump sum of some kind which the state is not willing to allow to be used. We

can't use monies for capital improvements. Okay. Um, and I've seen as as a practicing attorney, I've personally seen how difficult it is on the third floor of the Rominsky building. I've personally seen how desperately the court system needs domestic relations to be moved. This this is getting an to be an exigent circumstance. We need more space and domestic relations doesn't need the space that they have, but the court system desperately needs it. All right. I think this is the best we can do. Any other questions from council members? I promise this is okay. And then I'm gonna ask maybe no mistake that over 10 years we'll have pumped $3 million into that building. Most banks that sat vacant are lucky to fetch 5 to 600,000 that sit empty. So it's not Let's not pretend like they're doing us a big favor here with the buildout because we're paying for that buildout. We're going to spend $3 million in 10 years. In addition, we're going to have other costs with snow removal, upkeep, the taxes if they escalate, which we all know that's going to happen. So, that's my point I want to make. And my response to that, Mr. Luscavage, is that the county is going to pay a lot more money if somebody gets hurt at Binsky, and that's likely to happen. Thank you, Mr. Parate. All right. Miss Lawrence. Uh, is everybody okay with their first and their second with the amendment? Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Roll call. Miss Lawrence. Miss McDermott. Yes. Mr. Perry. Well, I was against this, but after listening to everything, uh, I'm kind of saying yes.

Mr. Sabatino. Yes. Miss Smith. I believe the due diligence was done. Well done. Yes. Miss Stevenson. Yes. Mr. Thornton. No, Mr. Wovich. Yes. Miss Krishnowski? No. Mr. Luscavage? Absolutely not. Mr. Lombardo. Uh, I have to abstain because I have a relationship with one of the other buildings being considered. The mo it's six to three with one abstension. It passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Number three, motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a lease agreement between Luzern County and the B bureau of 40. So moved. Second. Motion in a second. Roll call. Mr. Perry. Yes. Mr. Savatino. Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Mr. W? Yes. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Lcavage, yes. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Lombardo, yes. Unanimous. Number four, motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a lease agreement between Luzar County and the 44 Soccer Club. So moved. Second. Motion in a second. Roll call. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Mr. Wood? Yes. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Luscavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes, Mr. Perry. Yes, Mr. Lombardo. Yes. Unanimous. Number five, motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the county manager to execute an amended lease agreement between Lozern County and the Burough 404. So move. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call. Miss Smith. Yes. Miss Stevenson. Yes. Mr. Thornton. Yes. Mr. Will. Yes. Miss Krishnowski. Yes. Mr. Lecavage. Yes. M. McDermott? Yes.

Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Mr. Lombardo? Yes. unanimous. Uh, introduction of the ordinance for a 2025 fiscal year budget for Luzern County. Is that a motion? You're introducing. Okay. All right. Thank you. Number seven, motion to adopt the resolution approving a loan from interest on the UDAG fund to the city of Wilsbury for a sewer repair project. So moved. Second. Motion and a second on the question. Mr. Thornton. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to say um as one who went through borrowing money from Penvest myself as was suggested by someone on the Zoom tonight um we had to borrow 10 million going back almost 20 years ago in West Pittston Burrow. Um and that process takes months. It doesn't happen overnight. We had an emergency situation with raw sewage going into many people's basements uh backing up from the street. combined sewers with raw sewage and uh we had to borrow money from Penvest and even with that situation and order many houses receiving the sewage uh it took months so I don't think that's a viable option here for the city of Wolsburg. Thank you. Any other comments by council members? All right, motion second. Roll call. Miss Stevenson, can we open back up? I apologize. Uh motion to reopen. We already we already had the motion to have the roll call. Motion to reopen to question. Okay, let's I don't think we I don't think council wants to do that. If you want, go ahead. Make the motion. Motion to reopen. Is there a second discussion? Second. Okay. Motion a second. Roll call to

reopen the discussion. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Thornton, no. Mr. Wovich, no. Mr. Krishnowski, no. Mr. Luscavage, no. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Mr. Lombardo, no. Okay, we're reopened. Go ahead, Miss Smith. It doesn't have Oh, it was 55. Okay. I thought it was 65 or 64. Okay. Well, it's not reopen then. Okay. There's a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Mr. Thornton. Uh motion number seven. Uh yes. Mr. Molovic, yes. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Luscavage, yes. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Lombardo, yes. Unanimous. Okay. Number nine, motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a lease agreement between Lozern County and the Lozern County Flood Protection Authority. I lied. Number eight, motion to adopt the resolution depositing $299,767 into the reserve fund. So moved. Second. Motion in a second. Roll call. Mr. Wavage? Yes. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Liscavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Yes. And well done, M. Stevenson. Yes. Mr. Thornton. Yes. Mr. Lombardo. Yes. Now number nine. Motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a lease agreement between Luzern County and the Lozer County Flood Protection Authority. So move. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Lavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith?

Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Mr. Zorton. Yes. Mr. Wovitz. Yes. Mr. Lombardo. Yes. Unanimous. Number 10. Motion to adopt the resolution approving a modification to an American Rescue Plan Act funds awarded project for the Beaverbrook Association. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call. Mr. Luscavage. Yes. Miss McDermott. Yes. Mr. Perry. Mr. Sabatino. Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Mr. W? Yes. Miss Krishnowski? Yes, Mr. Lombardo. Yes. Number 11, motion to adopt the resolution enacting a veteran real estate tax exemption for non-war veterans and surviving spouses. Second question. Okay, hold on a second. Hold on a second. Who was the first? Who did you put? Okay, Patty. Miss Krishnowski. Okay, go ahead. Okay, does it m I mean, does it Who did you put down? Patty. Okay, Miss Krishnowski. That's who Sharon put down. I'll blame her. Um, who was the second? Second. Okay, Miss Stevenson. All right. On the question, Miss Smith, I just believe the um be it resolved paragraph needs to be edited just slightly. If you look at paragraph uh two, it says the current tax exemption program requires a veteran to have a 100% permanent service connected disability. And in the whereas it doesn't state that the disability has to be service connected. So not non-m modifying nonwart time just that it still has to be service connected which is I think uh and attorney Craig please tell me if I'm wrong but I believe that is a requirement uh as discussed by the uh by the office that's a federal yes yes so I do think our whereas has to be edited slightly to include that so I would submit that we

need to um amend it to nonwartime active duty retired service members who are 100% disabled with that disability being service related and they're unmarried surviving spouses or if someone can come up with it okay less cumbersome okay is there a second on that second is that okay that wording would that be acceptable I could I could insert the service connected disability. Okay. Yep. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. 100% disabled with a service connected disability. Yes. And that's just a federal Yeah. Right. Otherwise, this would not be able to be passed. Okay. Motion in a second on the amendment. Roll call. Miss McDermott. Emphatically. Yes. Mr. Perry. Mr. Savatino. Yes. Miss Smith. Absolutely. Yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Mr. Oliv, yes. Mr. Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Lcavage, yes. Mr. Lombardo, yes. Unanimous. Okay. Now, we'll have a vote on the uh amended resolution. Everybody okay with their first and second still? Yes. Okay. Motion of the second. Roll call. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Very much. Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Stevenson? Absolutely. Mr. Thornton? Sure. Yes. Mr. Wovich? My dad served in the Persian Gulf. I would like to thank all of our veterans. Yes, Miss Kishnowski. Yes. Mr. Lascavage. Yes. Miss McDermott. I got too excited the first time, but absolutely yes. Mr. Lombardo. Absolutely yes. Thank you very much for all your service, our veterans. Yes. Okay. Number 12. Motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the county manager to execute an agreement of sale, etc. for two parcels of county owned property located in Hanover Township to

Steven Jay and Evelyn Humanic. So move second. Motion and a second. Roll call. Mr. Sabatino. Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Mr. Wovic? Yes. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Luscavage? Yes. Mr. McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Mr. Lombardo? Yes. Unanimous. Okay. Number 13 is motions regarding the CCAP conference. Um, so this is on the agenda because typically the the chair uh recommends the two council members that'll go on, but I think there are more than two that want to be on there. Um, so we'll just have nominations for whoever wants to be on there. Just so it's like kind of cleancut here out in the open. Open nominations. All open nominations. All is there a motion? Open open nominations. Second. All right. All in favor? I. All right. Nominations are open. I'd like to nominate Harry Hos. All right. There's a nomination for Mr. Hos. Any other nominations? Like to nominate. We need a second. Oh, is there a second on Mr. Hos? Second. Okay. I'd like to nominate. Who wants to go? Mr. Sabatino. Mr. Sabatino. All right. Second. Second for Mr. Sabatino. Any other nominations? Second. All right. Who is this? I'd like to nominate. Wait. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Miss Krishnowski Miss Krishnowski nominated Miss Stevenson. Second it. Who second? Mr. Thornton seconded it. And then Mr. Sabatino nominated Miss Smith. Second. And Miss Krishnowski seconded. Okay. Is that it? Sharon Stone. I'd like to nominate Jimmy Sentino. He He was already nominated. Oh, I'm looked at this one. All right. Mr. Bolovich, were you interested? you know. Okay. Anybody else? Is there a

motion to close nominations? Motion to close. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Nominations are closed. All right. We have how many council members? Four. Okay. Any resolutions? Okay. Should we just take a vote on the one one motion for those? All right. We'll just have a a a motion for the four council members, the affformentioned uh Mr. Sabatino, Miss Smith, Miss Stevenson, and Mr. Hos. So moved. Second. All right. Roll call. Okay. Miss Smith. Yes. Please. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Mr. Wovich? Yes. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Liscavage? Yes. M. McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Savatino? Yes. Mr. Lombardo? Yes. Unanimous. All right. Thank you. And then when you're um bringing your expenses, we will need to probably do a budget transfer um because we don't have enough in the line item right now. Uh, so when when you guys come back, we'll need to we'll need to more than likely do that just for your information. Yeah. Yep. Yep. That's right. That's correct. Okay. We'll now move on to public comment. Anybody public comment? Non-aggenda items. Um, anybody in the audience? Mr. Carr. Yeah, it's unbelievable what you guys just did. Uh, Mr. Hein Marsh towards the end of his comments he admitted that administration directed him to specific properties. Did anyone say to themselves well is it is it Mr. Vogue Miss Alvantis who directed him? Who told him to go to these specific properties and find a deal? Something seems very very wrong and no one's concerned about that. Brian, you're agreeing with me. Oh, that's great. I appreciate it. Uh, the rule of thumb in real estate, one of

them, if you're the owner, uh, especially wanting to keep a tenant for a long period of time, the longer the lease, the lower the price. And that's just what just happened here is the exact opposite. Uh, you know, thirdly, uh, it's a shame that, uh, Leanne McDermott wasn't involved or or the committee, the real estate committee. It's hard to believe that she let this happen. And then uh you know fourthly over the weekend I looked at uh I looked at the uh the charter the county charter and then I looked at Ramilda's resume and the reason why we go through this turmoil in loser county with all these backward deals and one of them we we actually we we accepted a worse deal a couple years ago with the children and youth so that was a worse deal than this one. But no one said anything. I decided to get involved uh this morning when I woke up. But uh comparing Ramilda's resume to the county charter requirements as county manager. Uh the reason why we go through all this turmoil is because she does not have the experience necessary. She was put in this position by some members of this council. She sat silent tonight. I don't think anybody knows if she was involved in the process or not. And the county taxpayers come out losing again uh on on a lease that never should have been accepted that we're paying almost double for. As Mr. Scavenage said $3 million in 10 years in Kingston, Pennsylvania for an empty bank building. Something is very wrong. And I would ask

this council to either remove Rilda or deport her because it's an absolute disgrace what just happened here. And lastly, I would I received some threatening emails this morning from Brian Thornton, and I was wondering if he could expand to the public watching on television tonight, the public listening to the radio and the public here in the audience if he could explain his comments today. All right. Thank you, Mr. Carr. That that that he directed towards me. Thank you, Mr. Carr. Because it's not the first time that Thank you, Mr. have been threatened. All Thank you, Mr. Carr. Intimidated by members here. Thank you, Mr. Carr. You're welcome, John. All right. I'd like to Mr. respond to that, please. Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Just for the record, um I did not send any threats or threatening emails uh or intimidating emails to Mr. Carr. None whatsoever. The the emails we sent on the county are public emails. Anybody's welcome to look at them. I think all of council members were on that string and can attest the fact I I didn't threaten anybody. Thank you. All right, Mr. Mr. Carr, please. Please, you need to focus, Mr. Carr. All right. Okay. All right, Mr. Hall. Thank you. First of all, I just want to thank God. You know, and I thank you guys. You know, the crazy thing about me and my son, if a war broke out right now would go, you know, because we supposed to be Americans, love one another. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes. But a lot of people don't feel that way, you know. But like I said, at the end of

the day, I keep God first in everything I do, and he always takes care of me. Thank you guys once again, and God bless our vets. Thank you for your service. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your service. Okay. Anybody else? Public comment. Yes. Um, I'd like to submit these letters. Can you your name and your municipality? Sorry. Am I live in Sugarloaf? Dear County Manager Rild Kakamo and Luzern County Council. I'm writing to you on behalf of concerned residents in Luzern County who are facing an urgent and deeply troubling situation. So, I'm here. We're here again. A proposed utility project by PPL stands to permanently alter the character, safety, and livability of one of the most cherished regions in northeastern Pennsylvania. We are not opposed to necessary infrastructure, but the current plan prioritizes expediency over responsibility and puts our homes, families, and environments at serious risk. We're asking for your leadership in ensuring that smarter, communityconscious alternatives are considered. PPL is proposing a 12m long 500 KV kilovolt transmission line from the Suscuana nuclear power plant to the Humbult industrial area known as the Sugarloaf transmission project. The line along with the 200 foot wide service road would cut directly through the most pristine and picturesque part of the Nesco Sugarloaf Valley. PPL already operates a 230 kilovolt transmission line through the Sugarloaf Valley and is now working to obtain new right ofways, new rights of ways, sorry, in Black Creek Township. If this project moves forward, the region would ultimately contain three separate transmission lines, one to the east, one central, and

one to the west, completely devastating the last untouched gem our area has to offer. To make matters worse, ppl's proposing to use right ofway originally established in the early 1900s, 1909 to be exact, when the area was mostly open farmland with very few homes. That reality no longer exists. Today, the land targeted for this transmission line is densely populated with homes and families. A narrow century old right ofway through what was once a rural area and still is in many areas, but um it's very different now. does not justify it does not justify the construction of a massive 500 kilovolt transmission line. But that is exactly what PPL is attempting to do. PPL does not currently have a wide enough right ofway to accommodate this project. They're now approaching individual land owners seeking to expand easements to 200 feet placing them in some cases within just 90 feet of people's homes. These expansions would introduce towering 2440 foot tall industrial utility poles into residential neighborhoods looming over front yards, sideyards, backyards, people's lives, health, property values, privacy, and our right to quiet enjoyment would be permanently jeopardized, just to name a few of the consequences. Not to mention the big red lights for the airplanes that they'd have to have because it's over 200 feet every night. Residents could be forced to live with constant noise from humming high voltage lines, increased exposure to static electricity, visual blight of massive poles outside their windows, outdoor spaces like pools, basketball courts, family play areas would be directly impacted as well as toxic herbicides. I understand that's my time. Thank you. Yeah, the rest is uh in front of you. I submit that to you and thank you very much. Thank you. Uh go ahead. And then Mr. Griffith, I know you have a a slip. Sorry. Hello, John Zola Sugarloaf. So, what we passed out to you guys, Annie just talked about if if you guys could kind of read that over kind of gives you

like an overview of of what's going on in Sugarloaf. Um, it's a really really big problem. And you know, if you could take a look at the picture that we gave out, you could see that pole how gigantic it is. Well, that's small compared to what they want to put on our properties and through our valley. So, you could just imagine any one of you looking out of your kitchen window and taking a look and seeing that in your yard along with these enormous cables stringing from pole to pole. Lights on the top. So, when you're sitting outside at night, you get to see flashing lights, a 200 foot wide gravel road underneath these pole lines. So it'll be like living like on a runway at an airport. I don't think anyone would want that. So we've talked with PPL on numerous occasions and tried to reason with them and it's been fruitless. So we need some help and we need some very firm help. So here's what I'm going to ask you guys. By the way, we have 1,700 petitions signed already with people who oppose this line and it's growing every day. Okay? Our following on our on our Facebook is over 2,000, about 2,300. This thing is growing and we're going to continue to grow. So, um, so on on behalf of the alliance to stop the line, who I'm the founder of, I'm requesting that county council immediately suspend all alerts provided in the last two years for any project south of the Suscuana power plant.

Are we all okay? The second thing is we are also requesting county council put an immediate freeze on all new lures for any project south of the Suscuana power plant until which time PPL permanently abandons the current route and adopts one of the proposed alternate routes. And you'll see on those on that paper that we gave you, we gave them three options that they could take and they could get their electricity, their customers could get their electricity, and they don't destroy our valley and our properties and our lives and endanger our children. And while I still have a few seconds here, these 200 foot wide gravel roadways they put under these power lines have to be maintained. And how they maintain them was with toxic herbicides. And that's not like us going out with Roundup like this. This is a fire hose. Mr. Lombardo, you can relate to this. And when they spray this stuff, it goes everywhere. my grandkids and my kids and my family and a lot of other people's families. What are we supposed to do? Gather up our Wait, I got to finish this. Gather up our people and run. This is This is unthinkable. And we really, really need I don't want this to go on deaf ears. We really, really need you people to go to bat for us. And we're going to the school board next. And we're going to Hazel Township after that. Thank you, Mr. So, thank you for your time. Thank you. All right, Mr. Griffith, my comment tonight is about the Keystone Mission uh closing. I just want the

public and council to know that back in 2023 when that Keystone mission came to this council and to the public looking for funding, this council was unanimous in providing funding for them, unanimous in helping them in any way possible to take care of the homeless of this valley. Um, it's unfortunate that it's turned to the position that it's in now where the council uh where they they're they're closing that Keystone Mission facility on the corner of Union Street after all the effort that they came to this council and asking for. Their lease was very extensive. I stood at this podium and spoke to council about the due diligence about that lease and the extension and the time frame that they had in the lease and how I didn't think it was appropriate for them to bring that to council. But council felt in the best interest of the homeless people that it would be best to give them the $500,000, which I I I disagreed with the lease, but the premise was right. Now, we're sitting in a space where they now have canceled it, cancelled the lease, and they're moving out of here and closing that facility. My concern is the ARP of $500,000 that they got. Now, I spoke to the county manager. She's checking with Booth and doing all that due diligence that she needs to do, and I appreciate that as well. I would strongly urge as council to have Mr. Barons come here and explain to this council why he's closing that facility after all the work that this council has done to make that a reality and to help the homeless people of this area get them off the street. Give them a leg up so they can move on in life which that was the premise that that uh woman came the executive director came and told this council and now we're in a position where those homeless people have no place to go and no ability to get any kind of training or leg up on society. And I think Justin Barren as the executive director who has made the decision to close that has an obligation to come to this council and explain why that's happened and what happened to the $500,000 that they have received already and have used in that property and that

property has been rent renovated to accommodate the homeless and now they're not going to be there anymore. So, I think that that's something that this council should follow up on on that particular funding. And if we need to, maybe we need to go back after them to get our money back and reappropriate it. But he has some splaining to do as Lucy used to get told to this council and to say to us why they decided in their board to close that facility after they came to us in good faith, asked for the money, we gave it to them in good faith. I think that's appropriate. So, I would hope that that would happen sooner rather than later because this is a a pretty serious issue for $500,000. And I do appreciate the manager looking into it for me as well as council appropriating that money. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Griffith. And I I agree with you 100%. I think most members of council probably would like to hear from Keystone Mission. So, maybe we can get that onto our next work session agenda just to hear from Mr. Barren. Anybody else for public comment? Go ahead, ma'am. I wasn't planning on speaking. I'm the old widow from the last time and I'm just so upset. I've even had a ma'am. What's your I'm I'm sorry. Name and municipality. Okay. Sorry. My name is Brenda Rizzo with a third generation farming uh a farm down in Sugarloaf in Black Creek Township. And there are two power lines going through. One going through Sugarloaf that's disturbing even three homes that people have to leave. They're going through my farm. They're taking five acres. A whole entire hay field. They're cutting down a hundred-year-old trees to put a tower. It's the only place they can put the tower in order to go across the creek and down to the other side. They've intimidated me. They've told me that they will just take the property, condemn it, and I will get nothing which is illegal. They have been to my house three times.

The surveyors came on without my permission. I threw them out. They have called me 12 times already. I've gotten things in the mail that I was supposed to sign for so I could sign off the easement. And it's not an easement. They're taking the property because no longer will we be able to get the hay out if they put the roads back. There's an old road that goes down to the original homestead. That's going to be gone, too. I don't know what else to do. Uh like I said, I've had a heart attack over this. I'm really extremely upset. Please don't uh like John said, don't put a deaf ear to this. Take a look at a PPNL can do something else. There's alternatives that they can do, alternative routes. Also, you can put some kind of co-generation plant or some kind of generating plant next to the data center where they're needed. You don't need to disrupt hundreds and hundreds of people's homes. But PPNL doesn't want to do that because they can't make any money on producing the energy only by transmitting. Please come out and take a look at the properties and see how beautiful it is. Right now, it's going to be in front of our church. There'll be two big towers. So, from then on, we're going to have to go under the lines to go out to church. And you look out the church door and you're going to see two big towers with lights on top. And we're going to see that for the rest of our lives. Plus, it's also a health hazard. If you could hear the crackling sound, and they've done experiments with fluorescent lights underneath something that was less than the 500 kilowatts they're going to put on my property, and they lit up at night without even touching the poles and then they tell you that it's no health hazard. So, please come out, take a look at the properties, and see what it's like and talk to us a little more. We'd really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anybody else in the audience for public comment?

All right, we have one hand up on the Zoom. Mark, Mr. Rabbo, Mr. Chairman, this is Mark Rabo of Hazington speaking. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, I wasn't surprised about the vote on the loan, but I would just like to say to you, Mr. chairman, the members of council and mano that as I said at the last meeting, what you do for one, you must do for all. So you just set a precedence of having other municipalities come to ask the county for a loan for projects moving forward. So just be just be aware of what you did and the precedence you just established. Moving on. Uh I would like I'm kind of going to use your favorite word chairman baffled by what was stated uh by the domestic relations person who said that um that you know uh the procurement that there's there no need uh that the uh courts this the county court system doesn't need to uh do a RFP or or or follow the state procurement code. uh that requires an RFP for buildings as uh the vice chair and uh the vice chair said uh about this building in Kingston because last time I checked, I do believe that the court system is obligated in terms of following the state procurement code last time I checked. But what do I know? I'm not an attorney. maybe solicitor uh Ski or uh Solicer Craig Lipetski could look into that uh to see if that's the case. So, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to uh you know

agree with uh Councilman Lascavich as far as with the reimbursement. It's actually the magisterial district court judge staff and the courthouse staff that has been getting only 5% uh reimbursement where uh the agreement under the former Supreme Court justice Monttoro Frank Monttoro agreement in 1996 from the state supreme court uh arbitration that uh required up to 20% reimbursement for all for all magister ial district court judges staff and the courthouse staff and we've the counterar county has only been getting 500,000 per year when they should be getting about a million and a half dollars in reimbursement a year so I don't know why manager or uh the uh the office of law or somewhere that we had two legislative roundt discussions on this matter would speak up on this. And lastly, Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rambo. I'm in solidarity with this uh Sugar Wolf uh residents. Okay. Thank you, Mr. That would not uh drastically impact the quality of life and health of the of the people at Sugarloaf. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rabo. I I just want to respond to one of the things you said about the precedent uh being set. We have done those types of loans before for other municipalities. We recently did one for West Hazelton for their JC Drive Bridge project um and that was successful. And in fact, if it is setting a precedent, I'm fine with that personally. I would love to see municipalities come to us if they need help. And if we can offer them help, we should certainly give it to them because

uh we should be good stewards of all 76 municipalities, not just one or two. Anybody else for public comment? Go ahead, Mr. Lavage. Oh, I'm sorry. We do have about Go. You can speak first and then I have two two to read. I just want to say like tonight um with the lease agreement on the bank building um our manager had no vote in that. I know I haven't received a call to vote one way or another and I don't think anybody else has. And I will always stick up for a person who I believe is doing a tremendous job and she's doing a tremendous job. I sat here through a guy who I voted for who we would have been in dire straits had he stayed here another six months and I said this once before and I'll admit to my mistakes. I voted for him. Never sorry I ever did that. And now we have a person who can absolutely run circles around that gentleman and who does a great job for this county and I'm pleased that she's here and I'm very thankful. In addition to that, we have some great division heads and when somebody reaches out and has negative words to say anything about them, I'll stick up for them also because that's the kind of person I am. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Losavage. Anybody else for public comment? Okay. I have I have a couple of emails to read. I apologize. Uh, this one is from Deborah Jordan from Sugarloaf Township. Dear county council members, manager Rmilda Crocomo, budget department head, Miss Rosel, I'm sending this email today because I'm a bit concerned about the trajectory of Luzar Countyy's fiscal outlook. I've given some thought to agenda item number seven regarding the interest free loan to Wilsbury City. Respectfully, I understand that everyone has their own thoughts about the budget process, the county's fiscal situation, and the potential for future tax increase. But when I take a good look around our county, I see people struggling to pay for gas, for groceries, and for decent affordable housing. The thought of giving away money without the potential for any interest gives me pause. I also understand the county is $2 million in debt, which raises raises a red flag to

make this type of fiscal decision. I would ask two questions of importance. One, will there be any reciprocal services to offset this investment? Two, wouldn't it be prudent to consider at least a very nominal interest rate amount charged to this loan, thus still helping the city of Wilsbury and also helping the county at large? I do not agree with relinquishing interest made by the county and using it in such a narrow scope. I think good financial policy would be to use the monies afforded to Losern county by using them to economically boost the entire county. Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. Uh next I have an email from uh Leanne Bush who I believe is also from Sugarloaf. Uh council members, the misuse of taxpayer dollars is completely disturbing. It's been stated that county taxes will need to be raised in 2026 due to the manager's reckless spending. You all voted a $15,000 raise for her. For what? She stated the LCC tuition is necessary to keep good employees. One must ask how many employees left because of her or were given an ultimatum by her. We the county constituents of Luzer County want you all to take a stand. Do the job you were elected to do and asking to be elected for. You control the pur strings and it's high time you tighten the strings. Where? Why is there never a tax decrease? We have had it with this waste of our dollars. Next we have uh Robin and Walter Cochan from Dallas Township. Dear Lozer County Council members, we were very pleased to read that our DA, Sam Sanguoli, has accepted the Department of Homeland Security's offer to assist ICE in upholding our laws. We strongly encourage all members of council to fully support our DA's efforts to protect all legal citizens. According to the law, illegal immigrants breaking our laws and making daily life unsafe. From DUI/hit and runs to drug and human trafficking to rape, robbery, and murder of innocent citizens must not be allowed to continue. We are thankful to Mr. Sanguuali has the public's best interest in mind in assisting ISIS's efforts. It's absurd to think that council would have to approve the DA actually upholding the law. Please focus on other critical county issues in your realm, like finding creative ways to keep expenses down, to eliminate a tax increase, and to return to paper ballots

for elections with integrity. Thank you in advance for your common sense consideration and support of the citizens in Lzern County. Is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I. Opposed? Meetings adjourned at 7:35. We'll restart at 7:40. 7:45. Okay. I want to get out of here soon. I don't know. Come on. How are you? You don't ever do it. Saturday.

Sorry. Minor warm. It's

That sounds great. All right, council members, it's 7:45. Let's please take our seats so we can get started here. I'm hungry. I want to go for dinner. exaggerated.

That's right. All right, council members. Let's take our seats, please. No, you're okay. It's all right. All right. Yeah, we'll just I want It's hot in here. I want to turn it cooler. All right. I'm not gonna complain. All right, let's call the let's call the work session to order, please. We already had the pledge of allegiance in a moment of silence. Whenever council members that are not here show up, as long as we have quorum, we're good. Okay, roll call. Miss Lawrence, Mr. Hos, Miss Krishnowski, Mr. Lisgavage, I thought we were getting a presentation. Mr. Lisgavage, are you here? Okay. Mr. Learta, are you here? Yes. Okay. Miss McDermott, here. Mr. Mr. Perry here. Mr. Sabatino here. Miss Smith here. Miss Stevenson present. Mr. Thornton here. Miss Krishnowski here. Mr. I am here. Miss Krishnowski. See you have 10 of 11. All right. Thank you very much. Any additions or deletions from the work session agenda? Is there a motion to adopt? Second. All in favor? I opposed. Agenda is adopted. First we have budget reports May 2025. Miss Rosselle. M Miss Roselle. All right. Can you hear me? There we go. Sorry. All right. I wanted 30 seconds of fame. That took 35. Sorry. So, um,

included in your packet are the budget reports for May. Our first report is the revenue report. Revenue earned is at 72% of budget or 120 million 56. Our current year tax collections at the end of May are at million, which represents 88% of the current year tax revenue budget. Our expenses are at $46.8 million, 10% of the budget. Also included is your listing of the budget transfers as well as your account against payable detail report. The last report is a treasurer's report showing a cash balance of 22,269055 at the end balance at the end of April was 167628790. The interest earned for the month of 317,97945. Of that the ARPA interest accounts for 147,33867. Our year-to- date total interest that we've earned is $1.7 million. 1,776 42915. Our ARPA cash balance is sitting at about $40 million. 39,999062. The ARPA interest earned year to date is $930,000 and since inception it's 8.8 million. Does anyone have any questions on their reports? Any questions? Um I just want to mention one other item other than the reports. Um our 2024 county audit which we're um you know wrapping up. Um Clifton Larson Allen is waiting for the final audits for some of the human service agencies as well as domestic relations and the airport and then they will issue the county audit either Friday or Monday. They told us today. All right. They have drafts from everyone just not their finals. So they're waiting for the finals. Now does anyone have any questions about that? Any questions? I have a question. Not necessarily on those items. Um, okay. So, I in our in our list here, right, we have a category for housing trust that's total at $58,7158.

What is that housing trust funding used for? What is it accessible for? Um, I believe that that's part of community development money. Let me just look at your So, it's like a subcategory. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don't know that there is um I don't know the specific regulations attached to that, but I can certainly email you regarding that if there are any. I I don't know that there are. It may just be money that we can use for, you know, community development, but I'll check on it for you. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Sure. All right. I'll email it to everyone. I'll Yeah, absolutely. I'll send it to everyone. Okay. Any other questions for Miss Roselle? Thank you very much. Sure. Okay. Number two, discussion regarding resolution designating the Commission on Economic Opportunity as the lead agency for the Pennsylvania State Food Purchase Program. Good evening. Um, we have gotten uh correspondence from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture that they are requesting all counties to designate a lead agency for the state food purchase program. Um, CEO, I've asked Jennifer Warbach. She's she's here as well. CEO is the lead agency for the county's uh temporary emergency food assistance program or the emergency food assistance program which is better known as TFAP. They do uh currently now CEO is already receiving the funds directly for the state food purchase program but now the state the department of agriculture is changing the way the agreements are set up. So the agreement will have to be between the county and the PA department of agriculture and then we would designate the lead agency of CEO currently now the contract is just between the department of agriculture and CEO. So they're do CEO is already doing it. It's just a matter of the way the contracts are going to be going forward. Okay. I don't know if anybody has any questions. Miss Warbach, did you want to speak to any of that? Sure. Okay.

Um, so CEO and the Weinberg Food Bank, I'll say it that way, um, has been the designated lead agency in Luzern County for more than 25 years now. Um, so we specifically use state food money um, within the state of Pennsylvania. Um, and we get the best price possible for the 125 plus agencies that we serve across the county. So like Michelle said, uh, in previous years the agreement was through the Pennsylvania Department of A and Weineberg. Now it's now it would be through the county and then we'd be a subreient of the county for the money. And if you're just looking for an idea, um, last year, well, for the 2425 program year, um, Losern County received $680,000 in state food. Okay, any questions? All right, thank you very much. Moving on. Number three, discussion regarding the resolution to renew the lease with Christian LLC for Magisterial District Court 11304. Uh I am substituting for the court administrator who is putting his grandson to bed uh right now. Uh and uh both three and four are uh lease extensions for magistrate's office. Offices number three is for the magistrate office located in Hazel Township. Uh number four is uh a renewal of a lease uh for a magistrate's office on the Sansui Parkway. If you have any questions, uh, please direct them to the court administrator. He he told me to say that. So, any questions on those two items, number three or four. All right, we're speeding along through this last one. Should be real quick. Um, number five, discussion regarding the resolution establishing a standardized fee and abatement schedule for future lur requests. Uh, we do have Mr. John

Augustine from Pens Northeast here who has a few comments he'd like to make um regarding the schedule and there were some questions that were posed to him by council members this past week uh regarding the efficacy of alert schedule and uh some other questions about developers in our county and the region in general. So the good news is that I'm I'm not here to debate the court lease or the Wilsbury sewer loan. I just want to make sure that my parking ticket is is validated. Is is that good? Uh the other thing that I've noticed that since Harry Hos is not here, I expect 100% uh Lerta forever. I don't know if that's too much to ask for, but uh um I like Harry, so he'll he'll appreciate that. Good evening, council. Uh thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight on behalf of the economic development community. My name is John Augustine, and I'm the president and CEO of Penn's Northeast. Our organization was founded more than 20 years ago to market the collective assets of not only loser county but all of northeastern Pennsylvania with the goal of attracting quality employers to the region. My goal here tonight is to provide facts and figures to you to forward future discussions so that we can be on the same table or at least the same playing field with the economic development community and with council as well as our other partners. I come before you tonight to urge you not to pass any motion or resolution that we deem harmful to the future growth in the form of a set lur schedule especially one that we believe targets the logistics industry unfairly. We share a collective goal of a val of elevating loan countyy's economic economy and its people. Economic development in Luzaran County has been a successful public private partnership between the county, municipalities, chambers, school districts, DCED and private developers. LERA has been loan county's best tool for economic

development. The current LERA proposal threatens to derail the positive momentum that our economy is experiencing due to the past successes of speculative industrial development. Since coal, our region has struggled to remain competitive against other regions like Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and the Lehigh Valley. It's only recently that we have seen the results of our efforts come to fruition. But this has been a process for more than 50 years in the making. Historically, our unemployment rate has consistently been higher than both the state and national average, and only recently has that trended lower. We believe that is because of a concentrated effort to diversify our economy. We've been fortunate to have developers like Miracle and North Point construct buildings on speculative development. These developers take the big risk of spending tens of millions of dollars to construct a building with no guarantee of finding a tenant. Businesses need to move fast and can't wait for a year or more for a building to be constructed. and needs to exist today to qualify for site selection. Spec buildings attract diverse tenants, not just logistics, but manufacturing, life sciences, professional service companies. Increasing speculative development is a core principle of Governor Shapiro's economic development strategy. The state is seeking to maximize incentives, not restrict investment, and charge development fees. The strategy is focused on increasing the inventory of ready togo sites to attract manufacturing, life sciences, agriculture, and technology companies and outside investment to Pennsylvania. Lar County Council by embracing Lerta can use the same strategy as the governor to promote more speculative development and have more ready to go inventory and make our county a

destination for business. To install infrastructure like utilities before you even put up a wall costs millions of dollars. Our past has also presented extremely expensive issues and land development costs. Unlike the Lehigh Valley in central PA who builds on fla flat farmland, we're building on rock, brown fields, gray fields, and abandoned mine lands. We have to remove piles of calm and reinforce the earth before we can begin construction. Incentives like Koz and Lerta have allowed us to be on a level playing field with our competition across all industries and not just warehouses and distribution centers. When a developer builds a building on spec, they have no idea who the future tenant will be. It could be a warehouse, but could also be a manufacturing building or more recently a data center. Take for example Chewy, which has a distribution center in handover. They recently expanded into a spec building in Pittston to house their US headquarters for pharmaceuticals for pets. They are employing a large number of pharmacists and technicians. Local municipalities are on the front line when it comes to lured designations for areas that are extremely costly and difficult to develop with the hope of attracting jobs, tax revenue, and capital because capital goes where capital is wanted. I strongly suggest that you speak to officials and school boards in townships like Jenkins, Pittston, Hazelton, Nannyoke, and Hanover because of more than 15,000 jobs have been created recently in those communities. And I hope this is the beginning of a discussion between council, the communities, and the economic development community. When we receive a lead on a project looking to locate in the northeast part of the country, not in necessarily Luzar

County, in the northeast part of the country, we aren't the only one receiving that lead. It's a competitive process that looks at other communities, regions, and states. Incentives play a vital role in allowing us to try and be competitive. Dollars and cents matter when you're talking about a million square foot building, which averages $100 million to construct on spec. Even just $1 difference in a tax per square foot will make or break a project. Lerta is pivotal in making speculative development successful by providing a direct benefit to the company occupying the building by offsetting some initial investment costs. We're on the I81 quarter, but we're still a tertiary market. Our demographics versus state. We have a lower per capita income, 35,000 versus 43,000. We have higher unemployment, 4.4% versus 3.9%. We have a lower education attainment value, 25% versus 34%. Our population decline is finally stabilized. We should not risk turning it back in the other direction. Our population declined from 445,000 in 1930 to 319,000 in 2000. In 2020, the population stabilized at 326,000 thanks in large part to growth in the industrial sector. Competing markets have logistical and marketing advantages compared to Luzern County. The Lehigh Valley, East Allentown, Bethlehem are closer to major metro areas and ports. Central PA like Harrisburg, Carile, York has proximity to the state capital and is a major rail hub. These markets are more strongly promoted by the national brokers that represent tenants. The major brokerage houses all have offices in these areas. None of them are in northeastern PA. These brokers, which are the gatekeeper for deals, have to

drive one to two and a half hours each way to and from Luzar County to access our market. Our PA and New Jersey competition has more than 10 times our industrial inventory. Lands again are uniquely challenged, deteriorated, blighted, underutilized, environmental and topography issues and mine scarred. Lura was designed to bring investment to those types of lands, not pristine farmlands. Led is a direct benefit to the company that occupies the building. The company's investing in the local market and hiring local people, not bringing people from out of town. It's the hook that helps make business deals and bring new business, jobs, and investment to Lzern County. It lowers the real estate operating cost through a temporary reduction in property taxes for the new business, offsetting the local investment the company is making in hiring, training, retaining the workforce, and fitting out the building to their specific operational requirements. you aren't losing anything. Instead, you're securing a future and a new revenue stream. And I'd like to dispel a common myth. The belief that companies take a tax break and leave our area is completely untrue. There are absolutely no examples of it and it's not practical. These are industrialgrade assets with significant tax assessments and owners who are responsible for taxes whether or not they have a tenant. So even if a tenant were to leave, that building still has to pay the taxes that it's required to do so. Lur is the county's most effective tool to support economic growth by offsetting initial investment costs for companies. It's pivotal in the decision- making process. By putting a set schedule for LERA, whether for some certain amount of time

or a certain type of industry, you're hurting and handicapping the process, especially for local municipalities and school districts become because companies will bypass lo and look elsewhere. Salem Township where Alerta was put in place recently brought Amazon Web Services. Besides the thousands of construction jobs, including union labor, there will be more than more than $400 paying jobs paying over $65,000 a year in addition to the $10 billion investment in tax revenue. It will bring not only to Salem but to burrow school district and Luzon County because of Lerta, Hazelnut and Hazel Township will have a similar type scale data center developing and bringing similar benefits to the community. We are talking about billions of dollars coming to Lzern County. Just yesterday, the newspaper reported on a new beverage manufacturer in Pittson Township, which is going to employ more than 200 people while investing more than $30 million. And yes, Lura played a role in their decision. Warehousing and distribution are industries that people love to hate and they wonder why it's here and growing. Yet e these are the same folks that order online from Amazon and then expect a package in a day or even in a few hours. Since 2014, this industry sector has created more than 30,000 goodaying jobs in Lzern County. The average entry-level wage is now over $19 an hour, including benefits and often a sign on bonus. Existing companies like Ren Kitchens, HMTX, Chewy, Pepsi are continuously reinvesting in their

operations with billions of dollars of investment in upgrading machinery and equipment. In addition to the county's recent positive bond rating, the GDP grew by 4.9%. Logistics is the third largest contributor to the county's GDP, just behind manufacturing and healthcare. One to three indirect jobs are created for every direct industrial park job. Jobs like mechanical, electrical, contractors, equipment mechanics, snow removal, truck drivers, packaging suppliers, material handling, IT vendors, uniform suppliers, and on and on. And one of the greatest examples that I like to use in helping the local economy is Lowe's in Centerpoint, which has a standing order for 100 pizzas from downtown Pittston every Friday night. So, how many more warehouses do we want or need? My answer is all of them. Until our unemployment rate is zero, we want a job for everyone in Luzer County who wants a job. We want those jobs to pay family sustaining wages. Should we put up barriers to get a seat at the table without having individualized discussions with companies? No. We should be doing everything we possibly can to remain competitive against other regions. Alert is not a handout. It is a necessary tool to be competitive. Our recommendation, each project should be evaluated on its own merits. Don't stop something that is working. If you want to be fiscally prudent and you truly want the best deal that you can negotiate for county taxpayers, why wouldn't you judge and negotiate each individual project on its own merits without handicapping the process from the beginning? A growing economy creates upward wage pressure. A growing economy

has a growing tax base. All this is rising tides. Council risks adopting a one-sizefits-all policy that will limit its own statutory flexibility and discretion to deal with unique situations and scare away potential investors. Be the leaders the taxpayers want you to be. Don't stifle existing growth. Otherwise, you risk the threat of having to raise taxes. None of us wants to see a slowdown in growth for Lzern County. So hang the sign that says Luzern County is open for all businesses. Thank you for your time and I look forward to having further discussions with you. Thank you, Mr. Augustine. You can clap. You can all clap now. Do we do we not do that at council meeting? Well, no. Okay. I don't know. Maybe a little more theatrics would have been worth a clap, but All right. Next time I'll Next time I'll do some magic tricks. That's perfect. That's perfect. He's got to get through the security first, though. I did make I did make Harry disappear. That is true. That is true. That was a great to be said for that. So, yes, I made Harry disappear. Okay, we got a clap. All I wanted was a clap. So, there we go. Thanks, Jimmy. So, every I think that was one of the first council unanimous decisions that has been made tonight where everybody clapped. Harry, we love you. And we do love Harry. He's gonna watch this meeting later and be very upset by that. We do love Harry. We do love and and listen and and I and I can say that I've had uh talks with Harry. I've known Harry for many years. We have um we don't always agree, but we have a great working relationship and I always appreciate his uh you know, opinions. Great. Thank you. And um you know, I obviously have a pretty strong opinion on this. Um and I think that all development in this county is is good development. So I appreciate a lot of what you said, Mr. Augustine. Um, and you know, I have long

used the example of the Piston Area School District as one of the beneficiaries of these tax abatements. Um, many other school districts in the county are raising taxes. Some school districts are even considering merging with other ones because they have to raise taxes by five, six, seven, 8% on their residents every single year um due to ballooning costs and other factors. Um, in Pittston, they haven't had to raise taxes in the last 5 years. Um all the municipalities that are affected by these tax abatements in greater Pittston are also seeing massive benefits from it. Um one of the the kind of things that people don't know is some of these companies actually do a lot of donating too. Uh for example, Lowe's and the Home Depot uh warehouse that's in uh Pittston Township or Jenkins Township. I can't remember which one. It's in that area. Um they actually donate a lot of stuff to um our emergency services. So, if they get a refrigerator that has a light dent in it or something that was returned, we actually have benefited from that. My the refrigerator we have in Pitts City at our at my fire department is is from one of those facilities. Um, so they they do a lot of that type of stuff as well. There's a lot of different community outreach that they do. Um, and again, all of those buildings that were built by uh Mr. Miracle have all been built on minescard land. Um, none of that is being built on virgin woodland. Uh, it's all being built on on on land that has been pretty much destroyed by the coal mining and almost all on spec. Right. Right. And, uh, I I also really appreciate the example that you gave of of Chewy. Um, when I was running for county council in 2021, I made this I always used to make this little joke that people would laugh at where I compared the, you know, was like $40 billion of cargo that comes through our interstate corridor every year to when uh Henry Hill and Goodfell said that there was $50 billion of cargo coming into the airport every year and they tried to steal all of it because it was theirs for the taking. And I said that, well, this $40 billion is ours for the taking. This is something we should

be capitalizing on. So even even at that time you know I I was I was extremely passionate about this particular issue and uh realizing that these things can and should be done and Chewy is a great example of that. You know they they realized that with their logistics facility in Hanover Township they had such a good relationship with the uh people of Luzern County, the residents of the county and the governments of Luzern County that they wanted to bring something different into the county now and they have that pharmaceutical uh building which is employing technicians and pharmacists. So those aren't just your, you know, the jobs that that people would think would be in in that type of facility. They're they're very highpaying jobs and and like you said earlier, uh many of the jobs today are all in that $19 an hour range. Sign on bonuses, benefits. So, you know, I'm not really sure what the definition of a living wage is, but I would say that that $19 an hour is certainly somewhere in that ballpark. It's a great start. You know, it's it's $40,000 a year uh as an individual. So to two people, that's $80,000 with benefits in northeastern PA. And that's a pretty good start, especially when we're talking about some of the lower skill jobs. Um, one of the things that you mentioned, uh, council chairman, is this community benefit agreement concept of, you know, giving back like Lowe's and Home Depot does. And I encourage that discussion. What frightens me is the fact of by coming out and saying we're going to do five years for a warehouse. We're going to do this for that. We're going to require this. We're going to 2,000 here, 3,000 an acre there. You're you you you're putting companies off the chart automatically because guess what? Other communities aren't doing that. So, what I would rather see council do, you're all intelligent people. I would rather see each company come to you on its own

merit and argue for the development that they want. And if part of that discussion is some community development dollars to buy a fire engine, if it's to you know invest to be able to provide um you know um a home tax break, uh if if if it's any of those things, absolutely. that that that's that's your job. But what I don't want you to do is put together a predetermined schedule that then prevents the school districts and municipalities would take the majority of the tax revenue right off the table and out of the discussion because a company looks at the county and bypasses them based on what you've decided. I don't think uh for the most part for besides one guy um that council is against Lera. Um I think council has as I have seen in the experience has debated different deals for different for different projects and that's okay. I would encourage that and I would like to see that continue. What I don't want to see is putting on record specifics to say we're going to do this to logistics, we're going to do this to data centers, we're going to do this to manufacturing. Let's look at every company on their own merit each time. Uh, okay. Council members, Mr. Lascavage, then Mr. Thor, I I thought we were done with questions. Oh, sorry. And then Miss Smith, sorry. It's might be a couple minutes. So, since you like to since you like to do magic tricks, How about bringing a Trader Joe's to the area? Here's what I can tell you. We are working um in in commercial development in northeastern Pennsylvania to bring some

additional um uh retail development to the area. So, I won't speculate specifically on Trader Joe's, but um we're working on I got it. I got it. There's Yeah. Yeah, there was a note. There was a note. Um but no, we're But but but but again, here's the thing. Uh that's a great point. uh frankly because um you know when I was at the Wilsbury Chamber and I worked there for 15 years um we looked at uh 20 years ago having a Costco come to the area and then unfortunately 2008 hit the air hit the hit the country and retail development just went away. I mean we had an ESPN zone planned right by the arena. You know we developed the arena and what a great area that is now. uh by bringing in these jobs, we're bringing in a tax base and we're increasing revenue. Realize five years ago, just five years ago, the average wage in in warehouse and distribution was around $12 an hour. We're at 1975 with benefits for a lot of times lowskilled jobs. That's just an average. That's an amazing set. So, when a Trader Joe's, when a Costco or others are looking, they want to look at what are the spending habits of the residents. Well, if you're only making $12 an hour, they're not coming. So, if we can continue through competition to increase that, then we can attract those other types of things to benefit the community as a whole. So, great question, Mr. Thorn. Yeah, thank you, uh, Mr. Augustine. Thank you for coming tonight. Appreciate your time. Uh I I thought I knew everything about lurers, but apparently I did not. You opened my eyes to two important points. One is this council body here, we we have the

ability to uh put forward a more restrictive learner schedule with acreage fees and whatnot. And I never thought of the ramifications of impacting school districts and local municipalities. But as you made it clear, our actions here could effectively uh hurt their chances and and and handcuff school board members and local municipality. Super. Absolutely. And I never thought of that point because once uh an outside business developer sees that ah they look at that schedule we have or whatever and they decide to go elsewhere, the school boards don't even get a ring. They don't even get a telephone call. And uh I never thought of that. The second point which I never thought of uh I didn't know the statistics and when you just said a minute a few minutes ago that the average income in this area is substantially lower. I think you mentioned 35,000 or 36,000 versus 43. That's uh 20% lower than around the state than around Harrisburg or Philly. Um that makes us less attractive for business development because as you just stated a minute ago to Mr. scavenage. You just said, uh, you know, if our workers are only making 12 or $14 an hour, while you said $12 an hour, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but um, outside entities look at that. They know our people don't have the dollars to spend in the local economy. They just don't have it. So, having less average income in our region is a is a detriment to us into in in regards to attracting uh future business growth, economic growth. So that and uh unemployment, our unemployment is higher as you stated compared around the state. Um that that's a negative economic factor that we don't like to brag about or we don't want to hang our hat on. I mean that's something we should be all

as leaders here, elected leaders, looking to reverse that trend. Um I I don't think it's ever been wise for any government entity, state, federal, or local, to be in a business of picking winners and losers. U like you stated in your presentation, you you did state that many uh these developments started as warehouses, but they're transformed into manufacturing or other other businesses, which we nobody knows that. And I said this in the past, we don't know what we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen 5 10 years from now with these uh buildings. So, um I don't like to have a crystal ball or pretend I do and predict what's going to happen. Uh but no, I thank you for your presentation. You open my eyes to a couple things and I thank you for that. Well, thank you, council. There's one other thing I'd like to mention on that. Um our educational attainment is is not something that that we're proud of in Lzern County. We have a lower educational attainment level than than others. And it goes back to the coal mining days. I mean, you all know people that said we're a first generation u college. We're, you know, our kids are first generation going to a 4-year, you know, university. And so there there are two parts to that. We are fortunate to have 19 colleges and universities that has over 300,000 students enrolled in them within a 45 minute radius outside of places like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. that that doesn't exist. And so, uh, schools like Lacawana and Luzernne and Kings and Wilks and the others are are doing a tremendous job of trying to train for the jobs today as well as the trades and the jobs for tomorrow. But at the end of the day, we still need to have jobs for people that don't have a 4-year degree. And often enough, that happens in the warehouse and distribution sector because, frankly, some of them are

lowered skilled jobs. And so our goal at Penn Northeast with our partners is to diversify our economy. Do I want a data center? Absolutely. Do I want a biomed facility? Absolutely. Do I want a manufacturing facility? Absolutely. Do I want warehousing and distribution? Absolutely. I want jobs for every resident in Larern County and nor eastern PA that wants one. And the only way to do that is to diversify our economy and welcome all types of companies. And again, I go back to the point of I'm not telling council and I don't think council is saying we're against Lerta. What I want council to say is let's look at every opportunity on its own merit and debate that individually. Miss Smith, I have a couple questions and the first two are easy. Um, thank God. What is your organization called again? The organization is called Penn Northeast and we are a regional collaborative of nine counties uh in the northeast that work to attract quality employers to northeastern Pennsylvania. So county and others. I missed the rest. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Um you keep comparing uh you gave an unemployment rate of us having 4.4 versus 3.9. Is that the rest of the collective or is that the rest of the state or is that that's Luzar County's rate versus versus the state current the current state rate Pennsylvania and historically and and and happy to provide additional data if you look at the past 20 years we have constantly been higher than both the state and the

national average and 4.4% 4% and 3.9% right now is historic lows. We've averaged 6 and a half to 8 and a half%. But we have consistently been higher than the state and the national average. Okay. Um so all of your verses were loan county versus Pennsylvania, right? The 36,000 versus 43,000. Yes, those are the stats that I sample. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that I was understanding your comparisons correctly. Um, the Ted Lasso quotes Walt Whitman. I don't think it was actually Walt Whitman. And he says, "Be curious, not judgmental." So, just I'm not just I'm just curious about some things. Um, you you stated the average warehouse now starting wage for ar like largely unskilled work is 1975 an hour plus benefits. What is that source? Is it your own independent research? Yeah. Uh no, we use um uh a company called Jobs EQ and we also use implan and we also use PA career link to provide those those data numbers. Um typically we find even with unemployment numbers they lag by about three months um you know before you can get yeah before you can gather that data. But we don't rely on one source. We rely on multiple sources and we also um the other thing I I I I want to add because it's real time um we have members that are that are temp agencies and employment agencies. So both PA Career Link and companies like One Source that are actually out there doing the hiring for these companies and this is what the companies are telling them that they're paying. So we don't use just one source. Uh I don't mean to use one source by saying one source. We use we use

multiple sources. Are those the same sources? You said that there is no example of companies leaving when Alerta is completed. Are those the same sources? That source is for me and every economic developer in northeastern Pennsylvania. To the best of our knowledge, there has never been a company that has pulled out of a KOZ or left Alerta. These companies are investing bill. Adidas has more than $30 billion worth of equipment in their facility. Nardone Brothers Baking uh for pizza has more than $50 billion invested in their company. They are not picking up and moving after a 10-year expiration of of of attacks. And so unless somebody can tell me otherwise, and I'm not perfect and I could be wrong, I don't know of any company that has picked up and moved and left. That being said, and what would that span of years be? I've been doing this for without revealing your age. Well, I'm 24 years old, so for Yeah. So, um, I've been doing this for more than 30 years. Okay. I'm not aware of any company. But here's the other thing that I would say, Councilwoman, is that even if a company were to pick up and move, that building still has to pay you their real estate taxes. So, I'm not aware of any, but again, if that happens, and here's the other thing that I can tell you that since CO, we have put more square footage in northeastern Pennsylvania than we did in the previous 10 years. Because here's what CO did. CO said, it's palpable. It's you can see it. Yeah. So here here's what CO did, though. CO said, guess what? We got a problem. We just forced a whole generation of people like my parents that now have to buy

everything online because stores weren't open, right? So we expedited online purchasing. We then had a geopolitical problem because of all the products that were coming from China and elsewhere were stuck in the Pacific Ocean. So stores and shelves were empty. So what happened after COVID was that companies decided to expand e-commerce warehouse and distribution and fill the shelves with products so that they would be ready for companies to then buy. And so that grew our area. So, one of the benefits that we have in northeastern Pennsylvania is that because of our location, a truck driver can drive 11 hours before they have to pull over. So, within our 8081 corridor in Hasten, you can reach onethird of the United States and half of Canada in one day's drive because Canada, this is my next question. Canada's west, east, and like moose in the middle. Yeah. Right. So sometimes and sometimes but but you can reach a tremendous amount of of buying power with that which is why we've seen some of the growth. And we don't necessarily go out on a daily basis and target warehouse distribution. What we do is we target jobs. You know we target and and we uh market our location. We market our educational resources. We market our uh utility infrastructure. We market our people. um with the uh attempt to uh diversify the economy to be able to bring as much as that we can in because I I will be honest with you um I think at least for me personally one of the benefits I don't want to say benefits but pools of this is that we have had so much warehouse growth in this area which is backbreaking work and it doesn't pay as

well as other jobs especially especially comparatively to the culture that those types of jobs have versus other cultures. So, I personally am not going to say I'm against warehouses, but I would like to see um better jobs. I would like to see jobs, but I'd like to see better jobs for the people of Luther County. I think we deserve it. Um, but you mentioned Can I can I can I comment on that real quick? Um, so so when we go out to attract investment, we we attract we try to attract everything. So whether it's plastics, whether it's agriculture, here's a stat that I can tell you. Um, warehousing again is the third largest business sector in Luzernne County, second to manufacturing and healthcare. You mentioned that. Yes. It supports over 27,000 jobs. I know. and 1.4 billion in wages. The average wage is $52,000, which is much higher than retail, hospitality, food service, education, administrative services, arts, entertainment, and agriculture. So, I just wanted to comment on your point to say yes, we'd like to attract others, but this is an industry that pays very well and it pays more than a majority of other industries in northeastern Pennsylvania, including Lar County. I have um I'm very familiar with warehouse jobs and it may be because of what my personal relationship with people who have experienced it and I think I have a bigger problem with the culture which is an HR issue and also because I'm a nerd and that's fine with me. Um but going back to what you had said before about the 8081 corridor um you mentioned that other places uh

were bigger pools like near Harrisburg near state capital. Bethlehem is near railroad hub. Um other places are closer to ports. We are at the 881 Nexus. Is that not a pool in itself? It is. There's no question. But but again, a company will tell you um what the cost is for every mile that you're further away from a port because we import 90% of our products to the United States. So the further you are away from the port, the more costly it is. And again, it comes down to that dollar. Just take that dollar on a million square foot warehouse and that makes a huge difference. It does come down to the dollar. And then um I have one last question. one and a half. So spec, let's just be one, let's be specific. Spec means speculative, correct? Right. Yes, ma'am. So actually a problem with this schedule might be that we're giving this to development. Who doesn't know what they're developing for? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So, so when we talk about speculative development, um what we've seen since CO is that companies have exploded to um occupied buildings again whether it's manufacturing, whether it's warehouse, if you look at the time that it takes to develop a piece of land by getting what's called a neptis permit, for example, a neptes permit, NPDES permit is a water permit. Okay? It could take six months to a year just for a water permit. Okay? putting in infrastructure, building the building, doing the zoning, getting there. There was a time where steel was had a shortage and and it was a backup. Go get steel. So, your average building time was 16 months, 12 to 16 months. Well, if companies out there looking

tomorrow, they can't wait 16 months. So developers like Miracle and North Point have said, you know what, we're going to invest. And we're very fortunate to have two of them as well as some others that said, you know what, we're going to build a 200,000 foot building. We're going to build a million square foot building. We're going to build a 500 thou 500,000t building. This way we have product for anybody that wants it. And what I can tell you is in the last five years, our vacancy rate has been very low and the majority of buildings have been taken off the market leased before they've actually been completed. That's one of the things that speculative development does. My issue with with council's statement of putting forth um uh a schedule against warehouse versus a data center versus manufacturies. You don't know what what's coming. But as an investor or as a developer, you're investing hundreds of millions of dollars to put up a building with the hope that something comes. There is absolutely no guarantee. And so we are competing for projects on a daily basis across the Lehigh Valley. but uh Harrisburg but as well as New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Delaware. Um that's the Northeast Corridor. What I am very proud to say and I would commend council for this um as part of this is that the last four years we have been in the top 10 regions for economic development in the whole United States based on the governor's cup through site selection magazine and that is in our MSA which is lo and lacana county that is an amazing statistic to be proud of that all of you should be proud of to say and the only other one that placed there in Pennsylvania was the Lehigh

Valley and so we're competing against them but for four years we have been in the top 10 in the United States for economic development. Uh Miss Stevenson oh sorry miss are you done? We as in Luzernne or we as in the MSA collaborative the MSA Lern Lacawana County as as the M metropolitan statistical area MSA okay yes which also includes W county thank you council and and again I for you and for anybody else if there are additional questions that don't come out tonight or I you know again I I came here and said I expect this to be an open discussion and want and look forward to future discussions. So, we had some council folks send send some questions, but I hope this is not the last discussion and and I appreciate your questions and and and hopefully there's more and hopefully we can provide the answers. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Miss Stevenson. Then Mr. Satino. Thank you. Um Mr. Augustine, thank you for coming. Um Yes, ma'am. Um sorry that it took so long. I I wish we would have had this dialogue prior to this, you know, process. Um but here we are. Yes, sir. Um so, and you you've provided us with a ton of information today, which is great. The two take the two points that um Councilman Thorne took away were two that I also took away that we did not consider the full impact of of that schedule. However, I want to get back to the purpose of why we got here, right? The idea of the schedule, right? Whether it be for the lurers or whatever was to be intentional about what is coming into the county, right? So, understanding your position with Penn Northeast. Pen Northeast. Yes, sir. um your job is to bring these developers and folks into the county and sort of be that middle liaison for us to communicate, right? Yes, ma'am. So, I think next steps would be us figuring out how we can be more intentional, right? With not maybe not this schedule, but figuring out how you would like us to communicate to developers the things

that we want for the county, right? For example, housing. We made a request that if there are developers coming in and they're building and where wherever that might be, whatever that is with a litter or without a litter, that they would contribute to the community by providing something tangible such as housing as an example. So what would that look like between your communication with developers and what would that look like with the county? Sure. So, uh, great question. Thank you. Um, housing is an issue nationwide. Affordable housing is an issue nationwide. It is almost impossible to build affordable housing based on current construction costs, materials and mortgage rates. Uh we are not unique in how in having a housing issue and yes it is a housing issue. It is not the job of our organization or economic development to tackle that issue. Correct. That being said, I highly recommend that council create, just like you have an infrastructure committee and others, I would look at having a housing committee to address this issue. There are a lot of resources locally that um we can partner with, whether it be with the realtor association, with um the institute at Wils University to be able to address that. Lehi Valley has started to address that. They got to a point where it it almost became too much and so that they had they had to do that. We're not there yet, but it's on the horizon. So your your question is absolutely valid and what I would love to do is is be a part of that discussion, bring our resources and our partners together with council and have a a subcommittee or or a working group to talk about housing. I

hear that. And and while I'm very well aware that this is not your issue, nor is it the issue of the developers who come to the county, how do you see developers participating in this process to aid the county, right? If if there is a vision, if there is an idea, a thought that is out there in the universe, right? It is not their problem. It is not their responsibility. But what would participation look like potentially in this triangle relationship between developers you and us? What would that look like? What could that look like? Sure. Um I I arguably wouldn't they need that for people to work for them? That that that was going to be my my answer. H So thank you. Continue. Listen, when when when companies are are looking at regions, they look at um we called them rooftops, right? And so it's why you don't see a tremendous amount of development in places like Pike County that um are few and far in between. What I can tell you that happens in Monroe County for example besides Kobehan Army Depot and Aventous Pastor is that the majority of uh the industry is hospitality and they have a tremendous housing problem because their workers are being paid $9 to$10 an hour to work at Great Wolf Lodge and and other places. So they're having to put up some of their workers in their actual hotels. Um, so a company if they can't find the workers, they're they're doing their research. They're really really smart and they're saying, um, if we're bringing a business to the area, we know that we're going to be able to get the people. We just recently announced last week uh a company in Hazelton that's going to bring 320 jobs uh to the area. So, they certainly believe that uh they're able to get those employees. Um,

a lot of them will come from other employers by paying more, which again, that rising tide lifts all boats. But, but yes, I I I I hear your housing question. I don't have the magical answer for you. It is absolutely a discussion that that needs to be talked about and continued with with a bunch of other partners. No, definitely. And trust me, this is not a um, oh, they're going to solve the problem, right? This is way bigger than all of us, right? But considering the contributions that can be made is the point, right? Out of this Lura schedule situation, the idea was for Lazernne County to get more, right? Whether it be housing, whether it be something else, whether it be dollars, right? The idea was for the county to be to be compensated more, to receive more from from giving these abatements, the liters, etc. Um, so other than housing, maybe that's not the right uh example I should use. How else can we continue to benefit more from these relationships and these lura programs? Well, Councilman, I would I would go back and not not be argumentative, but say if a company is investing $100 million in a building and hiring 300 people at $2075 an hour, they are making that contribution to the community. Um, they are helping to lower the unemployment rate. they are helping to bring uh family sustaining wages uh for families uh that that need and want them. Um I don't necessarily think it's up to a specific company to solve a housing crisis. Uh I think that they can again contribute to that that fire truck. I think they can contribute to um you know the playground. But but as far as contributing to housing, I I think the fact that they're willing to make an

investment of again hundreds of millions of dollars that are going to pay tremendous revenues that the county and the municipality and the school district should be using that money wisely that they wouldn't have had before to be able to help solve part of those problems. Because at the end of the day, if we don't have those companies coming here, we don't have anything to ask for. you don't have any money coming in. And so I think that we should do everything we can to bring in that tax revenue which then goes across the board uh for various things like emergency services, uh roads, a etc. Um and I and I think that's part of a total community and countywide planning uh uh process. Mr. Sabatino. Good evening and thank you for coming. Thank you, Jimmy, for having me. I'm here because of you. Well, you know, uh, we've had a lot of conversations over the past few weeks that I appreciate, but, uh, I did give you a homework assignment. How many of the jobs from the are from the temp agencies are temporary and how many are permanent? What number out of your 123 questions was that? Uh, I don't remember the number, but you said that warehousing accounts for 27,000 jobs. It's an open book exam. Yeah, you could. There was only 17 questions plus the one. This one was on the phone call. So, Oh, that doesn't count. Jimmy, you said it was a good question. It was a good question. So, this is the only one you want I need to um to answer. Tell Tell me the question again. I'm just looking through here. Permanent jobs versus temporary jobs to the temp agencies. Okay. um 27,000 logistic jobs at an average salary of 52,000 a year. And those and those are

permanent jobs. Those are all permanent. None of those are temp jobs, correct? Um for um for for recent learner projects, what percent of construction and permanent jobs went to local residents or firms? Is that Yeah. Okay. Almost all our permanent hiring is is local. Um, but they're mostly uh permanent. What what has happened um and and I could I could follow up with you for that because I I I don't have um but what I can tell you what what's happened as the unemployment rate has dropped is that companies have um consistently looked at um temp agencies to fill positions because of turnover. And so instead of hiring an employee full-time that might not show up for work the next day uh and being on the books, they look to the temp agencies and then turn them over to permanent employees. So, what I can do is follow up with you, sir, and um talk with uh both uh PA Career Link and as well as some of our um local temp agencies to get you those specific numbers because unfortunately I don't I don't have that in front of me and I don't want to say the wrong thing. Um uh my next question is um this better be one that you gave me. No, it's one that you mentioned tonight. So, okay. the ones that I gave you, you can email me answers on. Yes, sir. I I would appreciate a copy of your all of your statistics. So, that would be helpful, too. Um, earlier tonight, we had a bunch of people here who had asked us to stop alert us for utilities. Can you speak to that a little bit? Nope.

Um, listen, I I I understand um a a little bit about what's what's going on in in Sugarloaf. And um you know, there's there's anytime that you do development, you get people that it's for it and and that it's against it, right? It's a double-edged sword. Do at the end of the day, do we want to pay more taxes and not have development? That's the other answer. So yeah, we could stop LERA. We can stop uh when we did KO. We could stop uh employing 50,000 people and we could have 10% unemployment and we can raise taxes across every level from the county locally. Yeah. or we can use things like Lerta to be competitive uh in order to grab that job before it goes somewhere else. And so what I understand is is those folks are are angry about a power line and I don't want to I that's not my fight. um uh the development process at the end and I believe county uh council themselves voted for that lura so we're we're not going to resend it again nobody knew what was going on there what lerta was is for is for crap land it's for land that is not developed easily or affordably and that project is full of minecarred land. So council was absolutely right in voting for that lura to say listen we're going to do this so we can attract a developer. Guess what they attracted? They attracted a data

center and I'm not going to say who it is but it's a major data center and the county loan county is looking at billions of dollars of tax revenue coming from that data center as well as jobs. Couple that with the one in Salem Township. Couple that with four others that my office is working on just in Lzern County. Council should be given a check to every resident in the near future based on the investment that we have on our desk. We'll start printing them tonight. Can I I just want to get my parking validated. So just you know we got you. Okay. Um, I want I Somebody needs to resuscitate Mary Rosselle. She's dying of hypothermia. Um, how is uh the determination for Minescard land? How is that how do we come to the conclusion that this is appropriate land for Alerta? Could you speak on that a little bit? Yeah, I think um uh Councilman, that was your question, right? Does the project meet the purpose of Lura? Right. So, Lura was uh created to support investment on blighted, deteriorated, underused or hard to develop land in Luzern County. That includes mines scarred and environmentally distressed sites. So when we're going out and asking a municipality, so the way that LERA works, for those of you who don't know, the municipality has to grant a LERA district before they're ever coming to you, the school district or the municipality to ask for tax forgiveness or abatement, excuse me, abatement, they need to grant a designation. Um, so we look at is the site in a designated deteriorate area? Does the land have real barriers like infrastructure, poor

infrastructure, environmental problems, and then will the investment bring new use and new uh tax value to uh to the site? Um will the project bring long-term economic value? It helps developers uh secure a tenant by offering savings in real estate costs that the company can use to offset what they invest in. Um, you know, most of our industrial parks that we invested in in the first one was in 1950 in the Crestwood Industrial Park by what was called the Committee of 100. Um, they build it on the side of a mountain. Not necessarily the best place to build it. Um, but the tremendous costs that go into building that is is amazing. A lot of our industrial parks are are full. So now we're going after parcels of land that are oneoffs and sitting on on comband. So the infrastructure is not there. Um if if you showed me a farmland that was 200 acres of green, lush beauty and said, "Should this be alerted?" I would tell you absolutely not. Thank you. Um you said two questions. No, I didn't. Okay. I did not. Oh, that was you. All right. There's more. You mentioned tonight that uh even if the the tenant of a of a project left at the end of the 10 years, the the um owners or the developers of the ware or the project would still have to pay taxes on it. Would you be able to look into how many of them have asked for reassessment or Well, we could do that, right? I I I would actually honestly defer back to county and and and and say that but have you in your experience have many developers asked for a reassessment? No. In in my experience uh no um but that's just my experience but I I would defer

to county um and the budget office uh you know for that you know. Thank you Miss Roselle. Well, you know what I can say is, you know, um, Elmwood Road in, uh, Crestwood Industrial Park, um, which was one of the most successful Koz's in in the state's history, has seven businesses that are there because of KOZ. KO's expired. You can talk to uh, not only the county um, but the township and the school district to see the revenue that they're generating from that road. and three out of those businesses have expanded more than four times. If you could email the answers to the rest of my questions, I would greatly appreciate it. You got it, sir. Miss Christ and and I and and Jimmy, I do have a bunch of them. Okay. I just didn't want to spend you sent me 177 questions. I know. Okay. So, I'm I'm curious but not judgmental. No. No. And and and listen, in in all seriousness, um I want to answer your questions. I thank you, John, and Leanne for, you know, and others for sending those questions. Uh hopefully I've answered a majority of them, but this should not be the final discussion, right? And and what I hope for at the end of the day is the council says, "Listen, we want development. We want to hang that sign that says Luzern County is open for business." um and that we want to at the end of the day look at every project on its merit. So if you want that firet truck, ask for that fire truck, but let's let's ask each individual company what that looks like. Let's put together alert a schedule that looks at what are the development costs. Again, not every piece of land is going to be or going to have the same development cost as another. So you might have a mines scar land versus a brownfield versus gray

field. Th those costs for development can be different. So let's that's the only thing I'm asking council. Let's look at each project on their own merit. Miss Krishnowski. Oh, there's more questions. Sorry, I'll be quick. I think I'm on a I just my my my concern is the environment because it seems like there's a lot of building but and just the people that were even here they're talking about power lines and stuff. Is there any commitment that you can make to make it at least a little bit more earth friendly? I frankly uh got great good question. I believe what we're doing is extremely earth friendly. um you know, we're taking lands that have mine runoff that are polluting streams um and we're putting development on them. Uh I think the best example is to talk to uh you know Sam Gusto and and frankly Earth Conservancy um to tell you what those benefits are that these these lands that have acid mine uh runoff um that continue to remain undeveloped without putting in collective systems. I think we're actually doing a benefit by building uh in a lot of those areas. And I think it's a great question and it's something that again I'm happy to get additional answers for you. Um but I and I think Earth Conservancy would be a really good one to do. I mean if you look at the amount of land that they have remediated in handover and Nanny Coke that was mine scarred that was providing acid mine uh runoff that was polluting the streams that they're cleaning up. And in addition, those development dollars are are helping to contribute to that factor. So I I I think in my opinion, and I I try to deal with facts, but uh my opinion is that

we're actually doing a good thing. You know, there are sites in Hazelton right now that um that you all have approved for LERA where we're removing triacles of calm that is just sitting there. Not only is it an eyes sore, it's an environmental hazard. You see that uh sir on on a daily basis. Who wants to look at a giant coal pile? So I I actually believe that the development that we're doing. Listen, we have to follow all the processes and procedures through DP, EPA. So this is not being done, you know, underneath the radar. I mentioned the the Neptis permit, you know, that takes a long time uh to get. So I I mean this is development that's being done thoughtfully. Uh we have to do we have to deal with storm water issues. Uh we have to deal with uh rainwater 100-year flood issues by putting in different things. We have unfortunately the um unfunded mandate of a rain tax that we you know we shouldn't have. Um, but I but I I think the development is actually helping environmentally and and and and again, we're we're not taking down a farm. We're taking down a brown field or a gray field that and I get that, but I guess my point too is like when you build a data a data center because it it requires an awful lot of energy and doing that, you know, I I guess that's what I meant about environmental because things like that. Okay, great question. I'll I'll talk briefly about data centers. Um we um are working on a tremendous amount of data centers. We were fortunate to be next to the Marcella Shale um which is the second largest natural gas reserve in the world. Um that is providing us an amazing generational opportunity. um the data centers that we are looking

to do um we have enough capacity on the grid to be able to put forth. Seven out of the nine data centers that are in PPL's territory are in northeastern Pennsylvania. Four of them are in Lzern County. Um two are in Salem, uh which we know has been announced. Another one um is in Hazelton. We're not going to be able to build more data centers if we don't have the power. So what we're doing is we have the power or generating the power. One of the misconceptions with data centers and it goes way back to what happened in Virginia was that the tremendous amount of water that was needed to cool the servers. What's happening right now as technology changes is that they are doing closed looped water systems and air cooling and instead of requiring millions of gallons of water a day, it is much less on the environment uh in terms of the water that that's needed based on the technology that's changing rapidly. Mr. So, how much quote unquote uh crap land is left in Luzern County to develop? A lot. I will have to get back to you on that, sir. Okay. Thank you. I uh honestly, you know, I I I I don't know. Um, you know, we look at um here here's what I can tell you that on my desk in Luzern County, I'm looking at about 20 million square ft of potential new development in the Hazelton area. I'm looking at 2 to three million square feet in the Hanover Township area. I'm

looking at 2 million square feet in the uh Pittston area as far as Luzernne County goes. Um those are the potential projects and a and I can tell you also that 90% of that is spec development. Um a lot of that is a miracle in in North Point in in Hazelton, but the exact amount of crap I don't have the answer, but I will I will try. All right. Any final questions from council members? All right. Thank you, Mr. Augustine. Well, I'd like to thank We really appreciate your time. Well, listen, I'd like to thank again all of you, as I said, and I'll I'll leave you with the closing remarks that I appreciate your time. I appreciate the questions. Um, and what I hope for is that this is not a final discussion, but a continued discussion um to work forward to move Luzzern County forward as we're constant currently going. um to a great future. Thank you. Thank you. Public comment. Okay. Yeah, I gotta clap. I heard a clap. I heard a clap. Anybody in the audience, public comment? Oh, we have somebody on the Zoom. Anybody want to take a guess? Mr. Rabbo. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Hey. Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mark Hazelton. Uh uh I'll be going to sleep shortly. Uh because I got to work. No, he he just fell he just fell asleep. living. So anyway, uh we just heard on uh any kind of economic development tool that the state has other than Luris that could be just as effective as Lurtis uh in any time, any place,

anywhere because apparently uh there is a vested interest by um uh an established political class in our county, Mr. Chair, as was referenced in recommendation number seven. remember reading that, Mr. Chair, uh with regards to the 2010 study commission, which by the way, I think you better brush up on that because I'll be having you read that sometime soon because uh your colleagues have uh uh been led astray and uh fallen off the trail of remembering recommendation number seven as to why keeps cutting out. No, he still bless you. He's Have a good night everyone. Thank you, Mr. Rabbo. Okay, motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? Oppos? Meetingsjourn. Thank you very much. Good night. Good night. Good night.