County Council - Regular Meeting

Now called to order. Would everybody please rise for the pledge of allegiance? Recording in progress. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America. Thank you. Please appreciate it. First public hearing. is regarding a planning and zoning issue. Is there any public comment? Oh, skip over. Miss Large, would you please call rolling? Mr. Hos, Miss Kushnowski, here. Mr. Lascgavage, here. Miss McDermott, here. Mr. Perry here, Mr. Sabatino here, Miss Smith here, Miss Stevenson here, Mr. Thornton here, Mr. Wovitz present, and Mr. Lombardo. You have nine of 11 present. Thank you. Is there any public comment on the proposed ordinance for the Lutheran County zoning map issue uh with the 49 acres in Newport Township? Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second by Mr. Krishnowski. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Meeting adjourned. Thank you. Start the next uh meeting up in two minutes.

I'll get it. I'll get it sooner or later. Next public hearing is now called to order is 5:55 p.m. We said the pledge of allegiance. Miss Lawrence, will you please call roll? Mr. Hos, Miss Krishnowski, here. Mr. Lascavage here. Mr. Lombardo, Miss McDermott here, Mr. Perry, Mr. Sabatino here, Miss Smith here, Miss Stevenson here, Mr. Wovich here, Mr. Thornton here, 10 of 11 present. 10 of 11. Thank you. Um, we'll now open the floor to public comment on the proposed ordinance amending the 2025 fiscal year budget. Any public comment on that item? Appears there is no public comment. We'll have a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Meetings adjourned. Thank you. We'll start the uh regular voting session meeting in four minutes.

It is now 6:01 p.m. The voting session is now called to order. We said the pledge of allegiance already, so we'll go on to roll call. Miss Lawrence. Mr. Hos. Yes. Miss Krishnowski here. Mr. Lcavage here. Mr. Lombardo. Miss McDermott here. Mr. Perry here. Mr. Sabatino present. Miss Smith here. Miss Stevenson here. Mr. Belovich here. And Mr. Thornton here. Nine or 10 of 11 present. Thank you. Uh we don't have any recognitions or ceremonial proclamations. Um are there any alterations or deletions from the voting session agenda tonight? Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. I'd like to move to remove number 11 from the agenda because we just got a new lease yesterday. Number 11. Yep. Is the uh we have a motion and a second on the question because we received new information, right? A lot. Okay. U roll call vote. Miss Lawrence, if I could, Mr. Oh, go ahead. Question. Is there a deadline for for the lease to take place or are we under the gun for to make this happen? No, we are. No, we're not. So we can postpone for two weeks. Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh roll call vote is large. Mr. Hos. Yes. Postpone. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Lavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Wovich? Yes. Mr. Thornon? Yes. Unanimous. So that was number 11. Any other deletions or alterations? Mr. Chair, I'd like to ask to make a motion to remove number seven. Um,

due to the fact that uh we've gotten some conflicting legal opinions going on and we would like to make sure that we do this properly and support our veterans in the in a in the correct legal manner. Right. So, we have a motion. Second that. Second on the question. Miss Stevenson on the question. Go ahead, Miss Smith. Oh, go ahead, M. McDermott. I have a question in reference to the memo from attorney Jarrett Fentino. He has um on the last page of that kind of conflicting information. So, I wonder if you'd be able to clarify it. The counties that he listed in here, Lehi, Carbon, Pike, and Lacawana, all have a tax exemption for nonwart time. each one of their uh resolutions mention nonwartime. They have to be 100% disabled. Uh so he has in here that all four of those counties uh their changes conform to the constitutional mandate exemption for veterans who are 100% disabled due to the service related injuries wartime service and their unremarried spouses. And then a little bit below he says Lehi Lehi Carbon Pike and Lacana counties have tailored the implementation such as specific deduction caps and focus solely on qualifying disabilities but have remained within the bounds of state constitutional and statutory authority. So he's saying that they remained within the constitutional authority. Point aware Mr. Chair point I'm sorry point. Should Should we leave this on the agenda and really talk about and maybe postpone it after if we have a problem? Well, because I'm I'm sure we have some other good questions, but I can understand bringing it up only so that the office of law can look into her comments and we don't need to debate it tonight, but just state your your concerns, which you have. Well, I think

we actually have an answer. I I we have an answer. What he Well, well, let me Are you finished, Miss McDermott? Well, yeah, I have Well, yes. Um just again to me it seems conflicting if he's saying that those four counties conform to the constitutional mandate. Um I think that was the question whether it was constitutional or not. Okay. I would rather not discuss confidential office of law memos in public because the public wouldn't have it because it's confidential. Right. Okay. So, um, we can talk about that off the record. No final and we we might want to have an executive session in two weeks if so. So, desire. I'll answer Le's question. I'll write back to her. Okay, great. Miss Smith, the um in my own research uh and discussion, it's my understanding that those ordinances as they stand in those counties are within the boundaries of what they can do. So, as long as we don't do anything farther than what they're doing, which our ordinance does not, we're fine. Okay. And we may move it to the work session. I would be okay to move it to amend it. We'll move to the work session. I don't know if you'd remove. There will be in a few. Yeah, there will be. Yes. Um, I would be happy to amend the motion to move this item to the work session. Do you want to reverse your motion? I will draw my motion and remake the motion to push this to the work session. Okay. Anybody second? Second. Mr. Gnowski. Second. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion pass. Mr. Chair. Move to the work session. Yes, sir. May I ask one quick question? Would we be able to do a quick executive session in between the meetings to discuss it? If if u do we have Mr. Fentino's re is

he available like at the executive session? Can you answer our questions? I don't think this warrants an executive session. It's just public discourse. Okay, perfect. No worries. Okay, thank you. We don't need executive session then. We'll just talk about at the work session. Good thought though. Okay. All right. So, seven's moved to work. Seven's moved to work. 11 was removed. Okay. Any other alterations or deletions? I make a motion to remove 19 based on that also people who go out and try to sell the county if you will for business purposes. These people weren't even contacted or interacted with to get their feelings or thoughts on proposing something like this. So until we do that and you want to remove it remove it completely from the voting session. Okay. U do we have a second? Okay. Uh on a question about removing take a roll call vote. Yeah, I just on the question about that. I mean, we we spoke about it was in was on our committee meeting that Mr. Sabatino headed. We talked about it last week, the work session. There were two weeks in between, but we received new information since then. I saw that, but yeah. Well, go ahead, Mr. Lavage. Mr. Hos, how would you feel if you were out there trying to promote the county and then this came to be without being discussed with yourself? I don't think you would appreciate that. So, in light of the new information, that's why we're taking a vote to do this. But I I'm elected to promote the county and that's why, you know, that's why we're here. I'm elected to promote the county and that's what why we why I've been sounding this drum for many months now.

Right. So, business your specialty. Yeah. Okay. So, at that have the vote to remove it off the agenda. Miss Krishnowski. Mr. Lavage. Miss McDermott. Yes. Mr. Perry, no. Mr. Sabatino, no. Miss Smith, no. Miss Stevenson, no. Mr. Thornton, yes. Mr. Wovich, no. Mr. Hos, no. Mr. Lcavage, I already called you. You are. Yes. I'm sorry. causing all kinds of trouble up here. Five and five. So it doesn't pass. So five yeses and five nos. So it failed to the motion stays on the agenda. Correct. Right. If that is correct. I think it is. Okay. Uh so the motion stays on the agenda. Any other alterations or deletions? Motion to accept the agenda. Mr. Chair. Well, before we go there, I have a motion to move number 17 to number one and vice versa. Move number one to number 17 as per uh the county manager, Ramila Crockimo's request. So move second. We have a motion and a second. And all those in favor say I. I. Opposed? That motion passed. So 17's moved to number one and number one's moved to 17. Any other alterations or deletions? Motion to adopt the agenda. Second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion passed. We'll now open the floor

to public comment on voting session agenda items. Now, keep in mind uh item number 11 and item number seven are not on the voting session. So, if your comments are regarding seven or 11, um they're not appropriate at this time because they're not being voted on. Any other uh comments are welcome on the voting items. Anybody? We have a couple slips here. Um we have a slip for Mr. Anthony Hall who wanted to comment on the public hearing which is already adjourned. Is Is there an Anthony Hall here? Yes, you wanted to comment on the public hearing, but that meeting is over. Is there another comment you wanted to make? I wanted to be heard regarding what item uh Okay, that's off the agenda, though. So, you could speak on that during the work session. It's coming up after the voting meeting. Yeah, it's at the at the end of this voting meeting. Yeah, sure. Yep. Uh voting meeting. Voting session. Mr. Conrad, it looks like you were going to speak on item number seven, correct? Which was moved off the voting set. You can move you could speak at that on that at the public speaking session at the end of the voting meeting. Okay. Uh let's see what else. Mr. Richard Ren. Yes. Okay. Uh you had an want to speak on an agenda item on the voting session? Same deal. Oh, number seven. You were going to speak. Okay, you can speak on that a little bit later. Okay. And finally here, Mr. Walter Griffith. Voting item. Yes. Go ahead. Number 19. Number 19. I did have the other two, but I'll wait

to talk on those as well. Okay. Okay. And I think there's a U item agenda 19 is a letter of Mr. Bardau as well. That probably has to be read into the record as well just for the chair's uh information. Yeah, he asked me to read that at the end of I just I just wanted to remind you in case you got you missed uh on my my issue on number 19 is I think the resolution is a a fairly the intent of the resolution. I get I get the intent. The problem that I have is the wording in the resolution pretty much makes the whole resolution move. I mean, what's the what's the point of a resolution that says at the end of the day, council gets to change whatever they want to do anyway? I mean, at the end of and at the very end of resolution, after all the verbiage that said that the warehousing, logistics, and and a fee for 5,000, which I don't know, we still we currently charge now is a per acre development fee for each of those categories. But it says the last part of the resolution says, "Be it further resolved that this schedule shall be used as guidance for negotiating LERA agreements going forward." final terms for any order to request shall remain subject to approval by the council. What's the point of the resolution? If there's nothing in the resolution that makes it solid, why are we doing it? If we're if we're not if we're not strong enough as a council to say this is our resolution, this is the guidelines. That's what you have to negotiate. No negotiation once the person reads this. So, if the person reads this and says, "Huh, well, I'll just talk to the couple council members. I'll get enough votes and I'll get that changed altogether. I'll make no alert to I'll get nothing until 9th year. They can do that according to this resolution. It means nothing. We need to be better at crafting resolutions if we're going to do stuff like this. And the intent is to make sure that we have clear-cut guidelines for vendors or people that put uh items into council for approval. Let's make it at least strong enough to be worthwhile. This is useless. If the

council gets to override it, what's the point? as a guideline. Okay, let's make a guideline that says anything. It doesn't mean anything. So, my point is that and it's all governed by the Lerta law anyway. And Mr. Lombardo's point is well taken. If it's going to discourage vendors and people from coming to the county, is that something we want to do or do we want to sit down and talk about how can we make this whole resolution beneficial for everybody involved? I get Mr. Hos's complaint and I agree with him 100%. The ability for us to give 100% learners for a five-year term, I think, is not reasonable for the taxpayers. But I think we got to come to common ground on this resolution idea of what is good for the taxpayers as well as what's going to not stifle business from coming here. So, thank you for the opportunity. Okay. Thank Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Uh do we have any other public comment here in the room? Any on the uh Zoom? Mark. Uh is there a Mark out there with their hand up on the Zoom? Mr. Chairman, this is Mark Rabo Hazelton speaking. Can you hear me? Okay, Mark. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is uh to piggyback or dovtail off of uh controller Griffith on number 19 on the voting agenda for the LERA. Uh I would like to uh add historical perspective from when home rule began on the lerta because the first county council uh had a uh baseline for alert of 50% in the beginning in the first uh the first council uh had a 50% la uh for for the for as the baseline but then as the years went on uh the the successive councils and managers

deviated from that and gave 100% learn somewhere along the lines of when the KO program expired. uh in that event uh the office of law during the the time of the deviation uh said that if that were to occur the you know to go from 50% to 100% then that would establish a precedence moving forward for other developers and then if uh the other developers weren't weren't given the same opportunity or same uh chance of getting the establish lishing that 100% then that would open the county up to possible litigation. So I just want to uh get that historical perspective because I think uh a one as I said for many years a one-sizefits-all uh for the learn is a very uh very reckless um solution. I think that there's enough tools that the state gives in other programs that are in the toolbox for the county to do on a case-bycase basis, not uh to just give any random developer, hey, we'll give you 100% here and you know, kind of like the Oprah Winfrey effect. You get a car, you get a car, you get a car. I mean, it's it's it's reckless and uh it it's uh it's it's a uh it's it's harmful for the taxpayers in the long run. And as far as number 18, Mr. Chairman, we talked about the Hotel Sterling in terms of the UDAG money. I think that uh myself and controller Griffith and others were proven correct that uh the UDAG money should not have been uh given for the Hotel Sterling when the developer was unable uh to prove that they had all

their financial uh their finance finances uh in in order with respect to lend uh uh loans and other lending institutions as you were as you are aware Mr. chairman. Uh that should have been established prior to uh uh the developers coming to council and now they're they're transferring it. So I think that this was uh a waste of time and uh and exercising the utility. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Rabel. Are there any other out there looking to speak? It appears not. Uh we'll close public comment right now. I have two statements to read. One from uh Chairman John Lombardo asked me to read this because he's out of town. No, no. Mr. Lombardo asked this to be read at the meeting tonight. It is regarding the lur of schedule. County council colleagues, I apologize for my absence this evening, but I could not let the Lord schedule vote come to pass without once again stating my vehement opposition to it. This schedule, whether suggestive or mandated, is sending shock waves all throughout the developer community in Pennsylvania and beyond. It is telling people that Luzer County is a wrench in the work of economic progress. We have long been trying to shake the stigma that county council styy's progress with its latitude and lack of synergy. But it

is obvious that there is still work to be done. First, this schedule is coming out of a committee that it does not belong in. The infrastructure committee should be discussing roads and bridges and county-owned buildings, not tax abatements. There is perhaps no less fitting of a committee for this type of legislation to pass through besides maybe code review. I have been told that the reason have been going through committee is so they can be negotiated prior to coming to the full council. It is clear that this is feudal because council members insist upon continuing to nickel and dime our potential economic partners at the voting session with surprise terms and vague addit language. even when they are members of the committee that negotiated the tax abatement. Also interesting is the fact that there's no mention of local labor in this legislation when it seems to be a routine talking point in other discussions. I find the inconsistency glaring, sad, and telling of the true desires of council members. I will keep this in mind in the future. We have also heard from Mr. John Augustine of Penn's Northeast who stated that it is negligent to make these decisions without all the proper information. We have taken the time to listen to stakeholders on other issues. Why are we not doing the same investments? The economic development community is coming to us with a solution to three problems. One, bringing good paying jobs to the county. Two, increasing the county tax base. And three, reclaiming unusable minecarred land. Unusable minecarred land which plagues the region. We should not be treating these people like lepers when they are actually major assets. When developers come to us with these plans, they're often built on speculation, not specification. They may not know whether a warehouse or

a tech firm or manufacturer is going to be the end user. In fact, that is most often the case. For example, many of the buildings in the centerpoint development of northern Luzar County house multiple diverse companies ranging from cabinet manufacturers to food banks to tech firms to distribution centers and even a trampoline park. Who has the crystal ball telling us what will occupy each of those buildings? Also present throughout the county is Amazon who recently announced a 20 billion with a B investment in our area. Should we really punish their warehouses in Pittsston, Hazelton, and Hanover Township while praising their tech hubs elsewhere? Maybe those incentives are the reason they are here and why this type of legislation sends the wrong message. We have an historic opportunity in front of us right now to make lemonade out of lemons of our past. If this schedule were to be successful tonight, we will be putting that future at risk. We are sending messages that Lutheran County is anti-growth, anti- business, anti- jobs, anti-environment, and anti-progress. Those messages like all that come from this room resonate far beyond the walls of this building. Please do not support this legislation. Thank you. John Lombardo, chairman, Loser County Council. I also received uh as the rest of you did around the table, a memo from John Augustine. He wanted this I'm done already. Okay. John Augustine of Penn's Northeast uh who regularly routinely as part of his career deals with outside developers and trying to uh culture and cultivate uh these developers to come to Luzer County. So, uh his message is short. It reads, "Folks, it is my recommendation that council table a scheduled discussion and convene a meeting or at least a discussion with economic

development professionals and developers who can better educate and inform and guide the discussion with the goal of a positive outcome for a process going forward. I applaud council for wanting to create a process, but I don't believe that council currently has a good understanding of what is going on in the economic development world, not just in Lutheran County or northeast PA, but also across multiple states and globally. To make decisions without proper information would be negligent. There's a great story to be told and Lutheran County is currently in the crosshairs of a once-ina-lifetime generational opportunity with family sustaining jobs. Before there is any vote on alert process going forward, I would wish the county and council would listen to the economic development community. Thank you for your time. Uh John Augustine of Penn's Northeast. Okay, so with that we'll move on. to the agenda items. Uh we have a motion to approve the minutes of May 27, 2025 voting session. Some moved. Second. All those in favor say I. I oppose. Motion passed. Okay. Item number one was moved to 17. Number 17 was moved to number one. The number 17, which is now number one, reads uh an introduction of an ordinance adopting the 2026 long range operational fiscal and capital plan for Lutheran County. Um I think uh Miss Roselle, thank you. And m Mr. Vogue were going to comment. Oh, was that Oh, yes. And thank you. I I I'm I'm on uh Zoom. I I'm here in Harrisburg.

Okay. for uh a dinner honoring the 2025 Governor's Awards for Envir Environmental Excellence. And I'm here with Beth Sinardi uh who uh is a staff member here in Lutheran County and the governor's uh awards for environmental excellence. Uh she is one of the award winners. Luther County is one of the award winners. So I uh I'm here uh in Harrisburg, but I do want to introduce Capital Plan and Mary Rosel and Nick Vogue will offer particulars. Uh but I absolutely want to commend Beth Donardi. Uh she is an award winner uh here in the state that highlights the best the best best in environmental innovation and expertise throughout the Commonwealth. Beth Dennardi from Lzern County is an award recipient tonight. So, it's my honor uh not only to be here with her, but also uh to uh introduce uh the capital plan and I will turn uh the microphone over to Mary Rosel and Nick Fog. Thank you. Thank you, manager Crocker. I echo all those comments. Beth Donardi has done an amazing absolutely amazing job with that operations building. It's on Wyoming a at our county airport. Anybody, you should go over and look at that building. It's amazing what was done and that it's a gorgeous, gorgeous building. Now, thank you, manager Crocker. Thank

you, M. Mr. Vogue. Good evening. Good evening. So, the capital plan, we have some amendments. Uh, so the new total going from 2025 to 2027 is roughly 4.9 million in capital improvements. Uh 2025 we have just under 700,000. 2026 3.1 million and 2027 1.125 million. Uh some adjustments were made. What was taken entrance for the courthouse here? We need more time to game plan that one since this is a historic building. What was adjusted? The security entrance for the prison was adjusted from a 1 million to 350,000 with a new estimate that we received. Uh the budget and finance outfit that was the facade part of that portion of the project was taken out and we adjusted down just to for the outfit and water damage to the budget and finance suite. AEDs went from $150,000 to $75,000. We got new pricing and uh a number of units for that finally. And then what was added in the assessor software? If Mary, if you can explain that one. Um, sure, no problem. So, we talked about that previously when you signed the agreement for the new assessor software. The um software won't be supported again after this year. So, we have to do the we have to do the upgrade. We have no choice. It's $100,000 this year and then $550,000 for um 26 and then 550,000 for 27. So, that's all put into the capital plan. Then uh other additions are vent cleaning for several buildings. We've had reports of black soot and dirt coming out of the vents. So this is a health and safety for employees type deal. Um the boiler roof replacement. Um lots of leaks in the boiler room. So we

have to get that figured out. Uh the prison camera upgrades, the new judge courtroom and chambers, and then an emergency building repair line. And then we also have the road and bridge garages HVAC. We have three garages that are without uh heat right now and or on dire need of new equipment. So any questions? Any questions from council? If not, the ordinance is automatically introduced by a county manager and and if there's any questions, you can contact me directly email. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. or Mary. Okay. Item uh number two, motion to adopt an ordinance amending the 2025 fiscal year budget to utilize $56,875 from the reserve fund for the strategic plan and five-year financial plan. So move on a question. Roll call vote, please. Mr. Hos, yes. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Lascavage. Yes. Mr. McDermott. Yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Unanimous. And uh items number three and four. I think Mr. Vogue will be at the podium to answer any questions. Um but right now, we need a motion. And item number three, a motion to adopt resolution authorizing a county manager to execute a contract with Northeast Energy Advisors. So moved. Second. Motion and second on the question. On the question, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Mr. I know we had a um an ordeal a couple of months ago before

Christmas where there was some ambiguity if if we RFPed it out. Did was this RFP out? Yes, it was. Okay. And what is the cost of the county? Zero. Okay. And how do we get to zero? Well, if if there's any cost, there's no cost to the county. No money will be going to the third party supplier. If if the supplier gets any if the third party consultant gets any money, it will come from the energy providers themselves. Thank you. Any other questions? Well, if I could, chair. Yeah. When when you do this, um, when you when residents engage in shopping for their electricity, too, it's the same thing commercially. So, um, it it is that we're still paying a percentage because the percentage goes to the broker, right, Mr. Vogue, even though it's for commercial energy. So, my my big concern was, and I I talked to somebody, one of the higherups at PPNL, why do we need a broker in the first place? because, you know, you can save an awful lot of money. I think it was like $40,000 in the last in the last prospectus, whoever the last um broker was going to be. But I I'm going to support it just because I I think it's better than the last process we had. But I think it's something to go for next year if we could really consider perhaps shopping for our own energy. I think we could pass the savings down to the taxpayers. Okay. Thank you, Mr. House. Any other questions? Mr. Luscavage, is there any rates associated with this for gas or electric? The only rate is the 0.0 hour 0.0 But if I could, Mr. Chair, how y So, they have a brokerage fee, but I think the county could capture that fee and use it for ourselves. And there is a tier based on the volume of energy you

use. There's different tiers commercially and I think in some cases I could see using a broker but that that's just never explained to us. I think this council in going forward needs to have a full understanding of what the process is. The packet here is about 100 pages about certificates and things like that which are really nice. I trust these people do a good job. But again the contention is that why don't we do that? Again I I just I would just like to examine all these different options. Um maybe we can remand to Mr. Sabatino's committee again. And that was sarcastic. Okay. Any other question? If not, uh, can we have a roll call vote? Miss Lawrence. Miss Kishnowski? Yes. Mr. Luscavage? No. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Hos, yes. And Mr. Thornton, yes. Yes. One, no. Passes. Item number four, motion to adopt resolution designating an agent to execute all required forms and documents for the purpose of obtaining financial assistance under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistant Act Act. Second. Motion and second. on the question. Miss Lawrence, roll call. Mr. Liscavage, yes. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Hos, yes. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Unanimous. Number five, motion to adopt a resolution approving a modification to an American Rescue Plan Act funds

awarded project, the Guisinger Clinic. So moved. Second on a question. Miss Lawrence, roll call. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Wovich? Yes. Mr. Hos? Yes. Miss Kushnowski? Yes. Mr. Liscavich? Yes. Mr. Thornton. Yes. Unanimous. Number six. Motion to adopt resolution approving a modification to an American Rescue Plan Act funds awarded project Michael Leen's mission. Second on a question. Roll call, please. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Hos, yes. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Scavage. Yes. Miss McDermott. Yes. Mr. Thornton. Yes. Unanimous. Okay. Number seven. We delete it or we moved it. We moved it. We didn't delete it. We moved it to the work session. I stand corrected. Number eight. Motion to adopt a resolution requesting a multimmoto moto transportation fund grant from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Financing Authority. So moved. Second. on the question. On the question. Yes, sir. Mr. Mr. V, can I ask a couple questions about this? Thank you so much. And um as you do, I just want to commend you first of all because the township supervisors in Franklin are real excited about this. Orange Road is it's it's terrible. It's terrible. We got comments about that all the time. So um just two things. What is the exact timeline again? I don't think I asked this last week. What's the timeline? And will this be a total rehab of the road? It it's a total rehab. 2.3 miles full depth reclamation. Um, it kind of depends on when the grant is accepted and approved. Um, once that happens, it's probably 6 months to a

year to get it started and going. So, we're probably looking 2027. Yeah. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Uh, any other question? Roll call vote, please. Miss Lawrence, number eight. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Hos, yes. Miss Kushnowski, yes. Mr. Lascavage, yes. M. McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Unanimous. Number nine. Motion to introduce ordinance authorizing the Secretary of Transportation to acquire right ofways necessary for the Water Street Bridge project. So moved. Second. All right. Hold on. No. No. We're we're doing it with the vote. Right. Right. The count who is first because everybody was Mr. Lascavage and then over here Mr. Wovich Mr. Wovich or Mr. Sabatino split it 50% each. Okay. On the question there is none. Roll call vote please. Miss Smith a thousand times yes. Miss Stevenson yes. Mr. Wovich yes. Mr. H. Yes. M. Krishnowski. Yes. Mr. Luscavage. Yes. M. McDermott. Yes. Mr. Perry. Yes. Mr. Savatino. Yes. And Mr. Thornton. That bridge has been closed since summer of 21. I vote yes. Unanimous. Thank you. Number 10. Motion to adopt resolution authorizing the submission of a growing greener plus grants program application to the Department of Environmental Protection. So move. Second. I think Mr. Lovage had that one. Second on the question.

This is I'm sorry just Mr. McDerman when I was reading through it said it was only for the application. So if we get the plan doesn't mean that we have to move forward with it. I don't know if anybody knows that. I don't know. Mr. Sche know that we apply for it. We get it. We normally do use it. Just because it's a storm water management, how is that different than the storm water management that we already have? Uh wondering if that I believe Mr. Ree Mr. Ree at the point Oh, who's up there? Miss Sparitch. Yes. I I was just going to say it would be to update the storm water management plan that we have. I believe and Mr. Reese can correct me, but I think our plan has not been updated since 2010. I know it was a while. And then it does say in municipalities, does that require them to pay any fee or like if this is updated, will they have to invest any money or do anything? They'll have to the plan. It's off now. It's on. Um, so yeah. So this is only going for phase one which is just identifying the scope of the plan uh and creating the plan advisory committee um to move forward with it and then phase two is creating the plan and then creating the ordinance the model ordinance for the county and for all the 76 municipalities to adopt. Thank you Mr. Reese. Any other questions? I was just going to say with um only some of the municipalities pay money into um WVSA, right? That's a separate separate. Totally separate. Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions for Mr. Reese?

Okay. Roll call vote, please. Number 10. Miss Stevenson. Yes. Mr. Wovich. Yes. Mr. Hos. Yes. Miss Kushnowski? Yes. Mr. Luscavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Unanimous. Thank you. Uh, number 11 we removed. Correct. and move on to number 12. Motion to adopt resolution amending resolution 2023-143 which approved the use of opioid settlement funds to fund the medication assisted treatment program at the Loser County Correctional Facility for 2023. Second. A motion to second on the question. Um why my question is uh we're approving the use of the funds for 2023. That was my question. Is that correct? It's it's my understanding. Oh, go ahead, Miss Stone. So that money is coming back. But we have to use it for the same purpose, right? Okay. Thank you. Any other questions on that? No. Okay. Roll call vote, please. Number 12, Mr. Wovich. Yes. Mr. Hos, yes. Mr. Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Lcgavage, yes. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Unanimous. Thank you. Number 13. Motion to adopt resolution amending resolution 2024-152 which approved the use of opioid

settlement proceeds to fund the medication assisted treatment program at the Luther County Correctional Facility. So moved second on a question roll call vote 13. Oh I'm sorry. Go ahead. Okay, Mr. I was going to say is this the one to reoplate the money to change the names three different types of the person that's why so this is modifying the 2024 resolution to take out sublicade and use long longl lasting injectable for the three different kinds for medical assistant treatment. See, thank you. Any other questions in this film? No. Roll call roll, please. Number 13. Mr. Hos, yes. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Luscavage? Yes. Mr. McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. M. Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Hulovich? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Unanimous. Thank you. Uh, item 14. Motion to adopt resolution approving the allocation of opioid settlement proceeds to loser Wyoming Countyy's drug and alcohol department the amount of $542,148 on a question. Roll call vote. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Lcgavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Hos, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Unanimous. Item 15, motion to adopt resolution approving the allocation of opioid settlement proceeds to loser/ Wyoming

counties drug and alcohol department in the amount of $477,968.75. So move second. A question. Roll call vote. Mr. Luscavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Hos, yes. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Thornton, number 16. Motion to adopt resolution approving the allocation of opioid settlement proceeds to lo and Wyoming counties drug and alcohol department in the amount of $518,673.84. So move. Second. Question. Roll call vote. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Wovich, yes. Mr. Haw, yes. Miss Kushnowski, yes. Mr. Lascavage, yes. Mr. Thornton, yes. Unanimous. Okay. Item number 17 was moved to number one. We vote on that already. Number one was moved to 17. So go back and read that one, which is which appears as number one on our our list. A motion to adopt ordinance amending the Lutheran County zoning map to reszone one parcel of property totaling 0.49 acres in Newport Township from ND non-developable uh district zone to R2 family residence district zone. Some moved. Second. Motion and a second on the question. Roll call vote. Mr. Hos, yes. Miss Krishnowski, yes. Mr. Lascavage, yes. Miss McDermott, yes. Mr. Perry, yes. Mr. Sabatino, yes. Miss Smith, yes. Miss Stevenson, yes. Mr. Wovit, yes. Mr.

Thornton, yes. Unanimous. Number 18. Motion to adopt resolution rescending resolution 2024-23 thereby deobligating funds previously allocated to H&N Investments LLC related to redevelopment of the former Hotel Sterling site. So moved. Second. Motion and second on the question. I just had a quick question. I think uh my memory I'm trying to remember. Was that $3 million? Is that what it was? So, we're deobligating the three million. Okay. Thank you. Uh, any other questions? Okay. What are we deobligating it to? It's just coming back to the UDAG fund. The UDA fund. Yes. That doesn't mean that it doesn't we still have no guidance on whether or not the particular requirements that came attached to funds and the funds that we've already spent from those that monies are released. The state never clarified that. No. Okay. Any other questions? No. Thank you, Mr. Sche. There was an executive session where Jack Dean explained his memo to all members of council. That's right. It's federal, not state. That's right. I remember that. Thank you, Mr. Scheme. Any other questions? Okay. Roll call vote, please. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Luscavage? Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Savatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes, Miss Stevenson. Yes, Mr. Wovitz. Absolutely. Yes, Mr. Haw. Yes, Mr. Thornton. Yes. Unanimous. Number 19. Motion to adopt resolution establishing a standardized fee and abatement schedule for future Lerta requests. Some moved. Second by Mr. Krishnowski. on the question.

I u I haven't made any comments tonight on it. I do have a few comments to make um as follows regarding the lura program in general. Uh there's two misconceptions I think surrounding luras in this room and outside this room. Number one, luras are not granite on pristine and prime land. They're granted under the state lur of law on compromised land. It's land that's poison, toxic, uh undevelopable. U and a lot of people get that wrong. They think we're giving away tax uh breaks to corporations and develop developers that are that are coming here to develop on nice developer land. And that's just not true. That's first misconception. Second one, misconception. I hear this all the time. The developer will come here anyway. So, we do not need a grant alert. Well, simply not true. Again, as evidenced, uh we have 75 years, 70 to 75 years of contaminated coal land all over this county. You all know where it is. You've all seen it. U there's a reason why it sat there for 75 years since mining operations stopped in 1950. No one wants to develop it. Why not? It costs too much. a developer will refuse to dole out a million or$2 million dollars of his own money upfront to develop or to uh reclaim that land. That's what the alert is for. It's for land that's otherwise not developable. So, I just wanted to clear that up. Um it's too bad Mr. Lombardo isn't here. Uh he speaks extensively on this subject with me and uh he'll always bring up the example where he lives, Pittston Township. Pitts Township hasn't raised taxes on their residents in many, many years. The school board of Pitts area doesn't raise taxes on their

constituents in Pitts area school district for a long time. The reason is years ago they had the foresight to uh implement and and deploy the KOZ program, which is similar to Alerta, but that's that's long gone now. and the KOZ program which gave tax abatements to corporations coming in to develop eventually they came to maturity and now those corporations are paying mega mega taxes to Pittston Township. So Pitts Township's in a position they they hardly ever never may have to raise taxes on their people. That's something we have to think of when we're taking any uh votes here or measures to uh thwart lures or or or diminish uh the capacity of which they could help development. Uh the end result of lures I think uh of this if it passes will be a jobkilling measure. We're we're turning away progress economic growth potentially. uh we're not going to know the effects of it probably forever because when when developers come from North Carolina or Colorado and they just see that we passed or they'll see it next year the year after a litter schedule and they say well 10 miles north of there or 10 miles south of the county Carbon County Schoolill they're close to Route 80 81 Turnpike 309 why don't we just go there they won't even come tell us that they they're not even looking at our county they're just going going to go elsewhere and we lose that and then we lose that millions of dollars of revenue forever. Can't get it back. We won't even know about it. Uh so every time a developer does that we are foregoing millions of dollars in future tax revenues without a doubt. And if the land stays mines scarred stays like that

for the next 20 30 40 years so be it. We collect pennies, pennies on the dollar, and uh we'll always collect pennies on the dollar. Finally, my last comment is when we take steps like this or we pass a business thwarting developer uh from coming here or thwarting his efforts. We are foregoing those millions of dollars down the road. When it comes time for budgets two, three, four years from now, five years from now, county council, who's ever sitting here, is going to have to make the hard decision maybe to raise taxes on the county people. And me, I don't like raising taxes on the moms and pops of Lutheran County, the widows, the widowers, the row homes in Hazelton City, Wolsberry City, Pittston City, Nanakoke City. I would rather get those taxes from big business, from the developers, from the corporate world. I'd rather take their taxes than me having to go to the common people of this county and tax them to make our budget work. And uh I just think that we're doing damage and harming uh to the whole county if we discourage and turn away these potential developers. That's my comment. I don't know if there's any other comments on this subject. If so, hear them now. Yes, Mr. Hos. Y I appreciate your comments and I appreciate the debate and some of what you said. I definitely agree with. I really do. I came back to council last year um on one of my major reasons for running was because in the two-year hiatus that I I was off, I saw these luras that were given. They were essentially KOZ's. They were 100% abatement in some cases. Hazelton City came and they asked I'm sorry, a developer came for a property

down in in Hazelton area and they actually gave the city a different version than they presented to the county. I don't know if you all remember this. And I said, 'Well, why can't you just give us the same deal that you gave Hazelman City? Well, this is what you used on the last lura handout that you gave. He didn't say handout. That's my word, not not this gentleman's. But that was a different lura package. We're just asking you to give us the same lur package as you gave to the former site. But I replied, you're giving a different deal to us, Loser County, than you are Hazelin City. And they didn't answer my question. I found that I found that extremely frustrating because that was not done in good faith. It just wasn't. This council ended up passing that anyway. And um we did it only after a few of us said, "Well, how about if you give us the same deal, then we'll pass it." They eventually came around and said, "Yeah, we'll do that." What this document does, and I'm proud of what Mr. Sabatino's leadership was in that committee. I don't care which committee it went through it. We're moving the ball in the right direction. I would have put on a code committee, but we've got a government study commission going now that's upending a lot of our codes and it's kind of moot until that study commission goes through to have a code committee because they're changing things for the next cycle if the voters choose that. But for something like this, the this schedule is not just something arbitrary. It's not something that's throw out there and last dime out of a developer. This is as much for management as for potential developers. The management wanted us to have some parameters to negotiate and that's what this offers. It offers parameters. It doesn't say we'll take anything you throw at us like this council certainly has done last cycle. They did and some of you were on the board at that time. It's not right. Council needs to be driving the bus. If the business committee wants to come and present their best case, that's why we have public sessions to do that. Um we got a a letter from an email from a gentleman. I I know him. He does a great job. Okay. But again, this was out there for two weeks. I I I didn't really appreciate what Mr. Lombardo said there

because I felt a lot of that was directed at me and that was disingenuous because I put that out there for him and he didn't have much to say last meeting and he could have and he could have come to the meeting. So, um I don't like that. I know the gentleman's not here, but it's not as sending a shock wave through the development community. If you haven't noticed, a lot of our homegrown developers are not investing in loser county. They're not. This downtown project is done by out of town, out of country developers. That's going to fall through despite the incentive that we have. So this is not driving away business. Na national companies see the opportunities that here. That's a big reason why we have the Amazon center $20 billion coming to Salem Township. And it's not just because alert. It's because of the power the power plants right there. They're going to be able to ship energy to the site at bust. It's right there. What these lures do, they certainly do what Mr. Thorne said, they help out minecarred land, but that has not always been the case. What these are is a way to get a a little extra profit out. I don't know why we can't properly negotiate these things, whereas the county doesn't have to sign on to the learned because the schools are the ones, and Mr. Omar is saying this too, they were the ones that charge a lot of taxes. So if the school wants to do that and the township or the burrow or the city wants to have just go go be it. But we represent everybody in loser county and it's not fair to the county county taxpayers at large to just say okay well you're giving the locality a different break but we'll take one on the chin for the whole county taxpayers. It's not right. It's not right at all. And so again this is not binding. This gives parameters. So if um somebody's really serious about investing in this type of property, they're going to come and they're going to put forth their best project to all the whole council after negotiating with the manager. So um I'm just looking at anything else that was said here, but that this is the middle ground and and somebody from the audience said, "Yeah, it's it's not buying. It has no

teeth." But the other side, it's going to drive business away. Well, which is it? Is it going to drive business away or doesn't have enough teeth? Clearly, it's some kind of middle ground that I think what we've done here on the committee and hopefully this counter will approve. It gives us the middle ground. It gives us the posture to say, "Look, we're not going to have one. We want your development. We want to encourage business here, but we don't want to do it at the expense of something loosey goosey or the expense of taxpayers at large because ultimately these lurists put the fingers on the scale for businesses that don't ascribe and can't get alert. I believe in free enterprise. I'm a free enterprise guy. I'm very consistent with this. I was said this was inconsistent. I was that with big labor. I was that way with big business. Okay. All right. We're here for the whole tax at large. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Loskavage. I think I said this two weeks ago and I'm going to say again tonight. This whole thing, and I do agree with Walter on this, does nothing. And we beat it for 45 minutes last time. We're beating it again, and we're accomplishing nothing. We we had one just recently for a Waw Wa and exit. I give them a lot of credit because they just put a new sheets a mile down the road in Wyoming. But who am I to say they shouldn't put a Wawa there? Let them put one there. They paid tax dollars. What do I care? The thing is it's called free enterprise. So we should allow people to put whatever they want, not dictate what type of warehouse, what business. I think that's what happens. Everything all levels out. And I'll go back to the arena when we watched that 25-y year video. Arena, no. Arena, yes. But when you go when you looked at that property prior to all of that development, it looked like hell. It was it was pretty sorry looking when you saw those before pictures and now the after. What's up on that hill with the exception of the mall because we all know malls kind of went south with different kind of

storefronts. But with that being said, I think water seeks its own level. It'll take care of itself. But I think we don't need to be involved in this to that extent. Plus the fact that 5 years from now, eight years from now, there could be somebody sitting here replacing all of us that say, you know what, we're going to give them zero for 20 years. I mean, at that point, there's nothing we could do. It's up to the individuals and have faith in the business and and the opportunities that come before us and try to make the best of it for the people. And I think by approving these things and getting money on the books, we keep taxes low and and that's I think the end game here because if like you said, if they don't come here, they're going to go somewhere else. Thank you, Commissioner Scavenage. Miss Stevenson. Um I want to say that I I do agree with some of Councilman Haw's statements. I think that this um this abatement schedule is the middle ground. Um I do believe that Controller Griffith makes some valid points, but I do think it it meets the requirements necessary to gauge who's coming in and out of the county. I do believe the the language that Chairman um Lombardo uses is very divisive, right? We cannot sit on council and operate in fear and then be at all at one end of the spectrum. We can't say, "Oh, this is going to completely remove everyone from coming to Lzernne County to bring business." Business will always come to Lzern County. There's 330 plus individuals who live here who will need to be supported here and will work here. So, I don't I don't think that that language is appropriate. I think that the lurer schedule allows us to put that information into the universe to draw people in with intention. The goal was intention, right? Lazern County needs a lot of things. We need jobs. We need housing, right? And we need to be able to lo use this land appropriately. There's not enough land in Lazern County for everybody, right? And there land will run out eventually. Am I wrong? So,

I think being intentional about what we put in these spaces and having something like this abatement schedule helps narrow that that scope. Okay. Thank you, M. Stevenson. Anybody else? Mr. Sabatino. One of the things that I heard tonight was uh things are being built on spec, which is speculation. I I the purpose of this is to bring less speculation and more, as Miss Stevenson said, intentionality into what we're doing as council and what we are attracting to our county for the future. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Mr. P, Mr. chair. Uh not to be redundant and go over the hash of things out for the last I guess eight years. I've been going through I've been supporting uh Luris. I think we've come a long way. Just look at the last ones we we we approved. I mean they're great and I think down the line we'll continue in that way. I just have a hard time putting this down in I I just cannot support that. Um, and I agree a lot with uh whis what Mr. Thornton and uh our chairman said and I just cannot uh support this. I just don't think we're moving in the right direction. I think Mr. Augustine had some great points. We never even brought them in to give us some ideas. They're they're the organizations that bring industry into us and and we just kind of like hurry up, let's get this through and why couldn't we invite them at at a work session, you know? So, they're they're the leaders. They're the ones that are bringing bringing everything to us. And and I and I really think that uh we're we're continually doing a great

job. We just don't need to put this down on paper. I I think it's it's just going to it's just going to not do well with this. We we could do the same thing and not have a resolution. Who said we have to have this piece of paper? We could we negotiate everything anyway. Why do we have to write write it down? Even though like the controllers said it is meaningless, it's there. It's on paper. And sometimes and Mr. Thornton had a great line last last work session. We don't know what we don't know. We don't know who's not going to come here and we'll never know that. So I I just can't support it. Thank you, Mr. Perry. Any other comments? Yes, Miss Smith. One of the things I think no one is really applying here is that they're we're trying to walk a fine line. trying to walk a line between inviting business and making sure that we're friendly for business, but also telling our taxpayers that we care about them and want to make sure that our businesses pay a fair amount of taxes. There is a space certainly for government to help and encourage economic development. I think that this was well determined and well thought out and I didn't vote to take it off of the session because I wanted to have this conversation. I think this is important. It's amazing to me. Councilman Hos mentioned earlier that well it either has no teeth or it's going to thwart business. And the problem that no one's really talking about is that words matter. Leadership matters. That's why we're talking about this for so many so for so long because words matter and what we put and what we codify matters. So I would like to see input from the

organizations that we heard from this week. Would I have preferred to hear from them earlier? That would have been great. So maybe we take this off of the voting session now that we've been able to discuss it and really get some points out there and talk to that organization. Again, I know that this has been worked on for a lot, but I think this means a lot. I think this is very important. I I tend to agree with you, Miss Smith. Oh my god, I never thought you'd say that in your whole life. I know. I I also didn't think I'd hear my No, it's amazing. No, but I in light of uh Penn's northeast and the comments of Mr. Augustine when he said we have no idea what's going on around the state and globally beyond the state and he would love to share that with us. Um we could consider bringing him in to speak here publicly in front of everybody. He may open our eyes and we may say whoa really. So I we could actually entertain a motion to to table this right Mr. H or Mr. Ski Mr. Oh. Oh, the T is hot. Well, you have very sim you have similar first names. I'm sorry. We do. We do have similar first names. So, um could if we introduce we could at this point introduce a motion on the table, right? You could introduce the table, but then you want to put it on a work session. So, whenever you were going to schedule, you put you want to put it on the work session, but you have to take it off. Okay. To put it on the work session. So, So, it has to be removed from the voting session. You could remove it. Didn't we vote on this before to have it removed? And it didn't pass because we wanted to have it. So, we could we could make a motion to table it, but not not have another work session and then put on the next voting session two weeks from now, but have the speakers come in and speak to us. Well, not on the voting session. Yes, I would I would say that

those two experiences should definitely be separate. Um, we should definitely have Mr. Augustine come in and elaborate. I would love to hear that, but I do not think that should it should be voted on in the same session. Correct. Logistically, you could table it and then you could have another voting session, another work session on it and then after that unt could I just So, can I finish what I was going to say? Yes. Go ahead, M. Smith. I do agree with Councilwoman Stevenson. I don't appreciate Chair Lombardo's fear-mongering language and I think incendiary language. Frankly, this was done incredibly intentionally. It's our job to protect Lutheran County. It's our job to promote it. We've been voted into these positions to do just that. And I think Councilman Savatino and his committee did an excellent job starting this discussion. And I hope that they're not disappointed because I think this is a long discussion. But I think this is a really really good start because it's important. So I'll make a motion to table it. Okay. Motion to table. Second. Second by Miss Stevenson on the question. On a question to table. If we table Well, there's no discussion on the table though. I'm sorry. The rules. Um, wait. Well, is the question on the table vote or is the question on the procedure? Not the procedure. Well, point of point of order, right? If we table this, are we not allowed to talk about it in a work session until we unt? No, we won't be able to vote on it again until you unt. So, we can freely put it on a work session while it's on the table. Right. That's right. Right. Okay. Thanks, Mr. Perry. All right. So, we have a motion to table. We have a second by Miss

Stevenson. And uh I guess we'll take the roll call vote. Mr. Lcavage. Yes. Miss McDermott? Yes. Mr. Perry? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Miss Smith? Yes. Miss Stevenson? Yes. Mr. Wovich? Yes. Mr. Hod? Yes. Miss Krishnowski? Yes. Mr. Thornton? Yes. Unanimous. And I I I thank everybody. I know it's a long meeting, long discussion, but it is healthy, robust discussion, which is why we're elected to sit here and present all points of view. So, thank you for the the nice discussion. Uh, that motion passed. Uh, at this point, we will move to public comment on any items. Right. Well, we have four slips. Let me call on these first. Um, Anthony Hall, just We'll hold his aside. Uh Jeffrey Conrad go to the podium, please. Walter, is the mic on there? Yeah. Mic. Mr. Conrad, you're from Nanico, correct? Yes, sir. Okay. on the item um number seven. Uh this is common sense. I mean, most of the country has already started doing this. It's already begun in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has the third largest number of veterans in the country, second only to California and Texas. 19,000 reside here in Luzernne County. I myself am 100% I am taxexempt. My father who spent 10 years serving this country is not. Why? We have almost the same disabilities, almost the same injuries.

Why? I'd also like to say, can anybody, any of these gentlemen, can you tell me which one of us served during time of war and which didn't? And ladies, sorry. Um, I please keep your comments though, directed to council. Yes, you can't tell me. And I would also like to say that during time of war is a ridiculous statement because when we are not in some sort of conflict, some sort of combat action. We didn't determine the Korean War, Vietnam War to be a war until years afterwards. That's why they spent 50 years trying to get Agent Orange benefits, you know. So, I'm up here now. I already have the benefit and I'm grateful to it. It saved my house. Me and my family almost became homeless because we couldn't afford it anymore. You know, there's a good chance everyone served at 22 a day. This could stop one of those 22 because financial reasons mixed with PTSD and all kinds of other things are what caused those 22 a day. It's not just lack of care, lack of mental health. It's the daytoday struggle with financial responsibilities mixed with all that stuff. I would say in closing that this isn't a vote on just money. This is a vote on patriotism. This is a vote on integrity. Integrity of the county, the council members, your own personal look inside. Each one of you has a veteran in your family. Vote on behalf of them, please. Thank you. Thank you, sir. And and just thank you, sir. And just to follow up on that, um I believe from talking to council members that pretty much everybody's in favor of granting uh the 100% tax exemption. We're just trying to clarify it with the state laws that seem to be a little bit I don't know conflicting with what we were going to pass. So, uh I

think in the future, near future, it's going to be clarified and sorted out. And I don't see a problem with it. That's my opinion. Okay. Next up, we have Mr. Richard Ren. You're from Wolsbury. Wilsbury. Yes, sir. My name is Richard Ren. I formerly was a disabled veterans representative for the state of Pennsylvania. I was the p I was the Luzern county director of veterans affairs. I'm also the was the director of the veteran multicare alliance and I presently sit on the goly board appointed by governor Shapiro. I've done these tax exemptions, hundreds of them. The thing that I'm here to do is try to clarify some questions that you have. First off, let's go over it really quick. It's a 100% disabled veteran who served during the period of a war. Okay, they're eligible. The requirement is not was he in a war zone. The requirement is during the period of a war. The veteran could have been stateside for the entire war during Vietnam. That's a war era. he could have never left the United States and still falls under the period of war. Okay. Um so they only have must have been in the military during a period of war. Now the Pennsylvania Office of Veteran Affairs under the PA agitant general's office, General Pippy monitors this program, approves this program, reviews this program. every application if it he say no, this young lady down here can't do nothing. They have to say yes. It's reviewed every five years by this office. They have people down there. That's all they do. Okay. Now, you have a multitude of counties that have already approved this. Lacawana County, which borders us,

Erie County, Pike County, Tyogga County, others are considering this resolution. They have already filed paperwork under their resolutions which were approved by the agitant general's office. So I don't understand the question of legality. All you got to do call Lacawana County and say are you doing this? Yeah, we're doing it. Well, they couldn't do it if it was illegal. Okay. Now, another point. Pennsylvania is one of the only states in the United States that still has this war clause we call it. Why? I talked to Senator Baker, Senator Dichek, this has been going on for about 12, 14 years. Keep going around and around and around. People say why? Everybody wants it off the books. Why? in their infinite wisdom, and this is a fact, and you could check this with your senators and and your house people, it's placed on the uh Constitution of Pennsylvania. So, they have to rewrite the Constitution of Pennsylvania in order to allow that. They ain't no big hurry to do that. It's a lot of work. And if you talk to all of these people, they will tell you the same thing. How come it's still on the books? They don't want to rewrite the Constitution. It's too much work. Now, they've done it for other things, but for some reason, not this. Now, I'm going to give you a Senate bill. Well, thank thank you. That's three minutes. Let me give you real quick now. Senate Bill 578, House Bill 1953, which are on there to approve this. And in closing, I just like to say one thing. All the money that your veterans affairs office gives to his vet gets for his veterans are federal dollars spent in this county. Thanks. It's a 7 to1 ratio. For every federal dollar in here, the economic impact in your county is seven. And there'll be another three minutes for you to speak later if you'd like. Okay. Thank Thank you, sir. Do we have Mr. Anthony Hall here?

Mr. Hall, you uh live in Wolsair? Yes, I do. Okay. Unfortunately, I do. I just moved here from Columbus, Georgia. I was here for the last meeting. Um when I moved from Columbus, Georgia, I was tax exempt. They told me when I moved here, I would be tax exempt. So, I moved here. My mortgage went up from 1,600 to 2,200. You know, I want to show you guys something. When I was in a service, when I look at I was going to take his leg, the bone came out the side of my leg. Also, I messed up my back. Back in the day, I don't know if you guys know or remember where they put your head and stuff and you have your intraction because you mess your back up or something like that. I was in the hospital a year. A year they was going to amputate this leg. I had a cast on his legs for almost nine months. You understand? When I got out the hospital, I couldn't work. I could not. They gave me a medical discharge. All my life I've been fighting. I've been fighting trying to work. I worked at the VA hospital in East Orange, New Jersey, carrying patients from there to from VA. I love this town. A lot of people that I belong here, I talk to them, they tell me so much about the town, you know. So, when I moved from Columbus, Georgia, and I was coming back because I have six daughters and they want me to come home because I'm too old to live down there by myself. So, I moved here knowing that when I was a working at the VA that this would be a good town to live in. So, I come here. I didn't get tax exempt. After all those years of going through the traction, they put a rod in my back, messing around them planes, jumping out, busting your butt, you know. Listen, I don't know what you got. My son got killed in 2007. He joined the military. You know, I don't know what else to tell

you people. You know, you guys sit here. I know it's late. Y looking at your watches. Y want to go home. But trust me, I'm about to lose my house. I'm on a fixed income. You understand? When they told me I could move here and this is what my mortgage would be and then when I get here I get rejected. It's not right. And one more thing I'm going leave with you guys. We are still at war. In August of 1990, you ever heard of the golf war? The golf war? You ever heard of it? It's still going on. Do you know that? And that's legal right now. As far as I'm concerned, I'm in a service during the war. And anybody that joined from 1990 till now is it's the same thing. And that's paperwork. That's facts. So if you tell me if I couldn't if I wasn't under the war or whatever it was from 1990, I went from the service from 1998, no 97 till to present. I was still in the army when there was a war going on. Look at your look at your records. The Gulf War, August 1990. And till present, we're still at war. Am I right? You guys know about that? Do anybody know about that? Can I get a hand of pe people ahead? Can I get a raise a hand people that know that? I got one, two. So, y'all all know that. So, that's telling you we're still at war. So, when I joined the military, I was at war. Mr. Hall, thank you for your comments. Appreciate it. Thank you for your service, too. U next up, we have uh Mr. Walter Griffith. Okay, I have a a couple of comments that um were not on the agenda under uh agenda number seven that was taken off the agenda. Uh that was dealing with the U veterans, but I want to jump over to agenda number 11, which was the lease for the uh ADP or JDP. Um the the question I have with that is I think we miss a lot of the opportunities for the real estate committee to do more uh due

diligence for the council and do a little bit of a history work. Same with the lerta. I think there should be better requirements to make sure some of these things go to the real estate committee. That stuff could be negotiated by committee and that would solve a lot of these issues. But I'm going to go back to agenda number seven because I sent a letter and and I want to say to my good friend Mr. Ren, who's a very good friend of mine, as well as all the other veterans that are here. This isn't this isn't something that anybody wants to not give the veterans. We're governed by certain laws of the county and of the state. And the Constitution is pretty clear, and I know Mr. Ren talked about a period of war, but it doesn't say that in the Constitution. And I agree with him 100% that this has been going through the Senate and the House for years. They won't take the initiative to fix the problem. So, we shouldn't be allowed to violate the Pennsylvania Constitution because the Senate and House doesn't want to do their job. My concern is veterans here that are deserving of this benefit and our hands are pretty much tied because we have a constitution that says we can't do that in the state. Let the legislature fix that so it takes our hands off and we don't have to worry about getting a problem where we're violating the Pennsylvania state constitution in order to give these veterans who truly deserve this benefit by the county. We can't give it to them because the Constitution says we can't. Now, the Veterans Affair Office in Harrisburg told me explicitly they approved the applications just like Mr. Ren said. That's true. They do. But if they come back and they say the person's not eligible because he didn't serve in a war of conflict, which is the dates are all up, who are we to circumvent that? And are we going to be allowed to do that for county, school, and state? Because when the state does it, they do it for all three taxing bodies. If we're going to do it, are we going to do it just for the county? And then if they appeal because they're not getting their school tax, because let's face it, school is the hardest one. Are we going to be involved in litigation now, much like the case law that we all received from the manager today? Are we going to be involved in case law to circumvent

the fact that some veterans going to appeal our ruling that said they only get county taxes when they could get school? And now we have litigation going on in the county for that purpose. I think we're standing on a a situation here where the le resolution needs to be to the state legislature. Lisa Baker needs to be called in and and um and our state representatives like Jamie Walsh and Alex Rickage and say, "Hey, why has this not been done?" A constitutional amendment is a heavy lift. You got to get two houses to agree in two sessions. That's a heavy lift. But who in their right mind in the state legislature would vote against that to put that constitutional amendment on the on the ballot? I don't understand how that would be even a reality. So that's that's the issue that I'm wrestling with and I'm sure council is as well. It's not that we don't want to give it. We have a real real wrestle real factor here we have to worry about. Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Thank you. I can have two more minutes. Can I do that? Uh at the end of the meeting, the work session meeting. Yeah. Not not right now, but um any other comments? We don't have any other slips. Anybody in the audience like to uh comment? And uh is anybody on the Zoom? We have a hand up looks like. Is that Mr. Rabbo on the Zoom? You're correct, Mr. Chairman. This is Mark Rabo of Hazelton speaking. Can you hear me? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Something you said during the voting session about the lures that was I found very profound and I want to spotlight on that, Mr. chairman that you said that you don't want to see the burden of the tax burden of the people that live in the row homes of Hazelton City, Nanakoke City, Wilsburg City, and Pittston City pay for the lion share of the t uh the county taxes. I'm glad you said that because the thing the truth of the matter is when you have the luras act as a KO,

that's exactly what's happening. the burden is on those uh homeowners of the of the four cities because the townships that are uh initiating the leras as a KO are benefiting from the leras. If you need factual proof of that, Mr. Chair, members of council, can county manager Crokimo, I would direct your attention to getting the copies of all the learners and KOZ's since the inception of the LERA and KO's. And you know where you can get that information from? The LEN County Redevelopment Authority. We keep a running list of it. So, and I believe the uh former manager Pedri uh had a work session who uh spotlighted uh what was what what the benefits were from the LERAS and the Koz's throughout the years like for each uh during the expiration of each of those periods. So, I think that would be beneficial in your discussion for the work session. Just a food for thought and going on to what you're going to discuss at the work session with regards to the UDAG for Wolsair City sewer system. I don't understand why Wolsair City does not just transfer their sewer lines if they cannot find the money in their budget to maintain it. That is not an operation of the county uh taxpayers to fund uh for sewer line repairs and upgrades. That is a municipal function even according to state law. So, what I would recommend is Wilsair City use their CDBG money through uh and and also apply for and Mr. Chair, you and Mr. Lascavage knows this program, Penvest, because I served on the Hazelton City Water Authority and

Penvest loans can be used for shoreline uh repairs and upgrades. So why doesn't Wilkare city uh apply for those uh funds through the state instead of using the UDAG money which should be used for county roads and bridges and capital projects that manager Crocomo just introduced for the capital fund uh for the capital projects uh in uh to be used. I think that's enough chair. Uh thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Mr. And and just for the record, I believe we're not using UDAG money. We're using interest off the UDAG fund. Just for the record. Thank you. Oh, community development interest. I think Yeah. Okay. Not the not the UDAG account. We're not taking money from that for the loan that we're going to discuss to Wolsbury city. Is there anybody else with their hand up out there? Uh motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I opposed. He already spoke. He had three minutes. Yeah. Did Yeah. At the next uh uh public session. Yeah. You get to you get to speak once per three minutes. Now, we can't we can't break the rules. That's what it is. So you can speak again at the next public session. Uh yes, we reconvene at 7:40. Uh it's all those in favor say I. I I opposed. Meetings adjourned. It is 7:30. We'll reconvene at 7:40. Thank you. Does anyone have an iPhone charger?

Would everybody please take their seats? Everybody please be seated. All right. Good evening everybody. Uh the work session is now called to order. Um we already have the pledge of allegiance. Ple uh Miss Lawrence, will you please call roll? Mr. Hos here. Miss Krishnowski. Miss Krishnowski here. Mr. Lcavage here. Mr. Lombardo. Mr. McDermott here. Mr. Perry here. Mr. Sabatino here. Miss Smith here. Miss Stevenson present. Mr. Willovich here. Mr. Thornton here. 10 of 11. Thank you. Uh any additions or deletions from the

work session agenda? Mr. Chairman, I have one of Mr. If I may. Mr. Hos, go ahead. I I sent you an email. I copied the council and and Miss Lawrence as well and Mr. uh about the the CCAP registration for the conference upcoming in August. I brought it up last work session, but I I thought it would just automatically be on this agenda. It wasn't. So, I I typed up a real brief uh draft resolution. So, Har, if you want to look over that convenience, of course, but if we can put that on tonight, maybe select members that are interested and debate it for a couple minutes. Yeah. Put on the work session here. Work session. Yes, please. So, it's the title is CCAP work session. Yeah. Not a resolution, just an item. An item, I guess, if that's what you It's a draft resolution. Number 10, the veterans issue second CCAP summer conference registration. Number 11 would be um CCAP. Okay. With 10 is the veterans and uh 11 is a CCAP. Sure. Uh any other additions or deletions to the work session? Motion to approve the session. Motion to approve by Mr. Hos. Second. Second Miss Stevenson. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion pass. Number one, receive a discuss division report reports for May 2025. Uh, Miss Crockimo's not here, so I'll take care of that one. All right. Attorney, you got the floor. Thank you. Attached, we have the division reports. And if anybody has any questions on those reports, feel free to email either myself or Ronald and we will answer those questions. Thank you. That was relatively painless. Thank you. Uh item number two, the discussion regarding resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a lease

agreement between Luther County and the burrow of 40. That would be page 40 of our packet. And the leash that'll be me again. Go ahead, Attorney Sche. So the I'll I'll take care of two, three, four. Okay. How about just number two for now? For now. Okay. Well, they're all they're all similarly situated. They're all similarly situated leases. And what happened is Okay, I see that. We met with the burrow about um allowing a part of the lease that covers the 44 soccer club to be converted into a dog uh park. And the burrow is going to take care of uh financially fixing that up, putting up the fence, monitoring it. And while doing that, they brought to us the leases and the leases had expired, one being extended that hadn't quite expired yet. So what we did was we redid all of the leases, brought them up to date, put in a provision just in case something is needed to go there for the airport that we would have access to take care of that for the airport. and they're just continuations of the lease with the proviso of having a dog park. Okay. Uh does any council members have any questions? Because I know we have someone here from 44 that you have any questions, but I don't have any questions. You okay? Everybody loves dogs. I take it. Mr. H. I think I'm I'm just looking for May, Mr. Chair. I'm just looking here. I don't see a fixed dollar amount for lease. I think it's for like a dollar, isn't it? I think they're just going to ensure correct. We're just basically helping out the burough when I remember the last. Well, we're helping it out and they're taking care of all the lawn care so that they're they're we don't have to do that. That's what I recall. Very

good. Thank you, Mr. Hos. The only question I have is liability. Uh will the countyy's going to continue to own all that land, but if there's a bunch of dogs in there? We have insurance and they have insurance. Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions? No, sir. Um, I think that'll So, that is two, three, four. I think that knocks off three of them right there. Right. How do you like that? We're moving right along here. Great. Great. Thank you, Attorney Scheme. You're welcome. Item number five, discussion regarding ordinance amending the 2025 fiscal year budget for Lutheran County. Uh, does Mayor Roelle? Okay. Is that on? Can you hear me? Okay. Okay. So, the first item I get I get the next uh several. So, item number four is to amend the budget is to amend the budget for by $2,000 to include um an increase in advertising for county council. So, that's really due to the fact that the rate um for advertising is like unbelievably higher than what we had anticipated when we did the budget. When we did the budget, we were paying like five cents a page, five cents a line, I believe, and now it's a dollar a line. So, we keep trying to negotiate that. So, we're still working. Is that with our local newspapers? It is. Yes. Okay. I think a couple of them are here tonight. They are. I don't know that they make the decisions regarding the advertising, but but um yeah, I'm sure the message will get relayed. So, um so we're still trying to we're trying to negotiate that. It happened last year, too. We were able to negotiate it down. Um so, we'll see what happens. Okay. But that's why it's needed. Do I have any questions? Any questions on that from anybody? Brings us to item number six. Discussion regarding resolution approving a loan from interest, I don't know if this is accurate, on the UDAG fund to the city of Wolsbury for a sewer repair project. Miss Roselle, that

me too. Okay. So, um, Mayor Brown has come to um to us um and asked for a loan in the amount Well, he actually came to us saying that he needed funding. Um there's apparently a sore issue at the corner of Cunningham and Pennsylvania Avenue. There's another s um sore issue in another part of the county also. So we um tenatively, you know, if you approve it, said, "Well, we can help you by loaning you the money to fix that problem um at Cunningham and Pennsylvania Avenue." And then, you know, he's going to have to get the money to fix the other problem in some other way. But we said we would not give him the money, that we would loan him the money for five years. So five years interest free his payment would be 8,8333 a month and he felt that that was you know agreeable to them at least they could afford to pay that and we felt like we were helping you know the area that we're located in. So and I I thought it was not coming from the UDAG fund. I thought it was community development. It is coming from community development miscellaneous um miscellaneous funds which includes UDAG. It does that's where the UDAG money is too. The UDAG interest all of that is all in miscellaneous. So, the the the UDAG fund, I understand, has been at standing around 6 million for a long time. We're we're not just going to take 500 grand from that, are we? Um, we're going to loan $500,000 from that out of that fund. Yes. There are several accounts that that include miscellaneous income. It's not just there. There's three miscellaneous income cash accounts that they have at this point in time. So, we're going to loan the $500,000 out of obviously the account that's earning them the least amount of interest. And that's where we'll we'll loan the $500,000 at. Okay. All right. Any other questions, Miss Stevenson? Um, first question is, you said it's 500k, but after interest in five years, it's eight. No, that's his payment per month at 0% interest. Okay. So, we're proposing loaning him the $500,000 at 0% interest, which would be a monthly payment of 8,833

a month. 8333 a month. Okay. And is Mayor Brown putting any collateral up during this trade during this loan period, I should say. Um, I I I think that that is to be determined. And I I don't think the city would would ever want to reneg on a a loan because of their credit rating would be disastrous for them. Yeah. Um, any other questions for Miss Rosel? I have a question. Has it been done before? Has Lar County ever loaned municipalities money? We've done this before. Yeah, we have West Hazel. We just did it in West Hazelton Bridge, right? Yep. Oh, I I wasn't here for that one. Okay. Um that's only I don't know. This is very quizzical to me. I don't I don't know. We have We have a lot of roads and bridges that need to be repaired. We've got the sewage here stinks. We've got a sewage problem here in Lutheran County um at our courthouse. And I I love Wilsberry. I I Wilksbury is my home for about 20 years and um I like Mayor Brown. I like what Mayor Brown's doing. But I I However, where does Can I just hear more of this more, Mr. Brazil? Where did this come from? I think the UDAG money has has to be used for uh basically development of that Hotel Sterling site and create jobs. But go ahead, Mr. I'm all ears. I'm just scratching my head a little bit on this one. The monies that we're borrowing from or lending from in the miscellaneous account can't be used for roads. That's what I thought. So, it's not it's not money that we could use on that particular project. This particular fund cannot be used for roads. Right. And again, we did not we would not agree to give him the money. The request was can you contribute $500,000 and we said no, we cannot. So the offer was a loan if it's approved. Okay. And and I I didn't hear what is So

he's going to give us a flat fee at the beginning in in payment. No, he's going to pay us a monthly payment over five years, right? But we're not getting any interest whatsoever on this. It's just a free and Okay. They're not. I wish Harrisburg would give us some deal like this, you know, but I never see it. I've been asking for 12 years. Wilsberry is the county seat. So I always say I always said that the county seat, we have some obligation. I try to work for the mayor. I don't think I've ever said I'm all about helping reluctant to help a municipality. I think that's shocking. I said I I don't think I've ever heard Wazern County Council be so reluctant to support a municipality. Oh, I'm happens to be the one shocking. I'll speak for myself. It's not the council. It's just me. But I'm not reluctant. But I again, the devil's in the details like we talked about last week. That's all. it. I don't mean to be antagonistic or I'm not throwing up flags, but I think we just we just have a lot of things to spend money on. I I don't know. It's I don't think that's unreasonable to bring that up. Mr. Lavage, I personally I'm in favor of this, you know, even though it's 0%. I think it shows goodwill with the city. I think we need with the the rail station down there and everything that's going on in Wilsair, I think we got to give a helping hand to get this off the ground and maybe this is the start of a good relationship. So I I think we have to build from there. I hope so. Thank Thank you. Any Mr. Shabatino? I mean, I'd rather get interest, a little bit of interest, but I'm I agree with Councilwoman Scavage. We do have a responsibility to the county seat, so I I would support this, too. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions for Miss Rosselle? Yes. I think we still we should be good neighbors, you know. I mean, just because Harrisburg doesn't do it for us doesn't mean we can't do it for others. Exactly. Thank you. Any other comments? We have uh Miss Smith. Miss Smith, I'd just like to know what kind of

disaster we're probably averting in order to help with Wils Barra, right? Because it probably is something dire. Um, so if if we don't give this loan, it's probably something. Mayor Brown told me it's a sewer uh 30 ft deep and it's a complete collapse. Yes. And it's a major probably averting a lot more fees or costs. Major emergency, he said. Right. Yeah, it is an emergency. He has two emergencies. Again, we're helping with one. He's What's the second one? What's the second emergency? Two sewer. Another sewer issue at another in another part that you mentioned. Yeah. Thank you. Got you. Any other questions for Miss Roselle? No, sir. Okay. Thank you. M Roselle, do do you want to stay there for a minute? I'm going to stay here. Yeah. Okay. Item number seven, discussion regarding resolution depositing 299,767 into the reserve fund. Can't we just even add out to 300,000? No, we can't because the amount of the check is 299,767. So close. But no, we we cannot. It just sounds a lot better. it. Sure. As long as it's higher, it does sound better. Um, yeah, that's so that is the CCAP dividend that we received. Um, we received one last year. So, um, now we're receiving another one this year. So, we're uh, thankful for that. Uh, with that deposit, if you know that's voted on and it's agreed to, our reserve balance will be at about a half a million dollars. 515840 to be exact. Yep. And I thank you for that. And I wish it was higher than that because we're always dipping into it, taking money out of the reserve fund. be nice to have a question. Well, now we're putting it in. So, okay. Any questions for Miss Roselle on that? See cap dividend. Okay. Uh, Miss Roselle, thank you very much. Okay. Item number eight. You want to stay there and talk about anything else? Me, too. I'm up again. No, you you could be seated, Mr. Take this one. Item number eight, discussion regarding resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a lease agreement

between Lutheran County and the Lutheran County Flood Protection Authority. Attorney Shane. Yes, we have Chris here to discuss that, but we've had a long-standing relationship where they utilize um and take care of the land for us. They have their office there, and part of the ARPA funding, we gave a grant to the garage, which is on that land. So, we're just going to give them a long-term lease that solidifies that they're going to be able to stay there and continue doing the good work of flood protection. Great. Would you like to add anything to it? Yeah, sure. Sure. Go ahead, Mr. Elman. No, that's fine. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. It's uh just to provide a little background on more than what Harry provided. Uh for over 30 years, the authority has been uh using a uh you know, this building on Cameron Way in 44 as our levy operations facility. Uh uh we maintain the building, utilities, and one of our approved ARP projects is to actually expand this building. We're going to put two storage bays on each end to store a lot of our equipment and vehicles that we currently store outdoors because because we've outgrown the the current space. And when we're when we were looking at this, we discovered that there's really no agreement which memorializes this arrangement. And to protect uh both the county and the authority, we I approached Harry and Ramilda. We thought it would be a good idea to put some type of agreement together. Uh and and that's the agreement that's you know that's before you tonight. Okay. Thank you. Uh any questions? Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you for waiting all night. I had nothing else to do. You're you're two two two minutes of fame. Congratulations. I appreciate it. Thank

Thank you. Good night. You have a good night. All right. Uh that moves us down to item number nine. Discussion regarding resolution authorizing the county manager to execute an agreement of sale for two parcels of county owned property located in Hanover Township to Steven J. Evelyn C. Humanic. Oh, Miss McDermott. Yes. I did. Oh, there you go. Uh, this has gone through the real estate committee uh several times and it actually came to council and we voted to allow them to advertise back on December 6th of 2023. Unfortunately, this got pushed under the rug, but this is um two parcels that sit by side by side. They're approximately 30 feet wide and the other one's 20t wide. Individually, they fall in the non-buildable category. Um, but the Humanics home is east of these two lots, so it makes sense for them to bid on it. And remember, Mr. Lascgavage, we went back and forth on trying to get more money off of them, and after much examination, uh, decided that the parcels are really not worth anything except to the adjacent property owner. So, again, we voted to allow them to advertise back in December 6 of 2023. and they did produce the advertisement just more recently because again unfortunately it got pushed I don't know where but um she did advertise and now the next step is for us to vote on whether or not to sell the parcels. Thank you Miss McDerman. Any questions for Miss McDermott? Mr. Luscavage I know like the last one we passed. I hope this is the last one though for because the assessed value is 10 grand and we're selling for 500 and on that thing we passed tonight with the zoning originally. The reason they got the price they got on that land was because it was unbuildable or what. So now we changed the zoning and now they they have a half acre there that they could do something with. So my point is yeah this unfortunately like I said it was something that we had worked on a long time ago. It's from 22. So your point is

going forward though let's stop the practice of giving away both you and Mr. Sabatino did say you wanted to work on a minimum bid schedule. So yep, you certainly can bring that to the real estate committee. Okay. Whenever. Thank Thank you. Next real estate committee meeting. We I think better with the deadline. I I know. It's like we I think we have one packet that came in and How about July 4th? Oh, no. We don't have it scheduled, but you're not available that day. I'm going to be at your house. We'll get one in. We'll get one indefinitely this summer, but there's only one packet at this point. I don't I don't know what else we have. Okay. All right. Uh any other questions for M. McDermott on that issue? Thank you, Leanne. Uh item number 10 we added tonight from the voting session. It was the uh motion to uh it was a motion. The issue is to adopt a resolution enacting a veteran real estate tax exemption for non wartime veterans and surviving spouses. Um we did discuss it a lot. I think in general everybody's in favor of this. We just want to make sure we didn't come up with a legal resolution that would uh you know five months, six months later, we'd have to come back and revise it. So, uh go ahead, Miss McDermott. Thank you. I could start it and everybody else can chime in. Um okay, so again, we did get a couple different opinions and and things thrown at us today and I know that's a lot to absorb before the meeting. Uh but again this resolution just goes back to adding only the word non wartime. Now in that do we have to delight what a gentleman said that well this is what's been debated. It's been going back and forth all the email and everything that's been going back and forth on it. If we're we're just trying to exempt the county taxes. We're not trying to do anything for the school or the municipality. They can decide to do what

they want. But what we if we decide to do this does not influence them to although you know it' be nice for them to consider it. But uh again this is something that is wartime. So what is wartime service and and in one of the um email that we received it goes through the wartime uh service period. So World War I, World War II, Korean, Vietnam and then again uh what Mr. Ren had mentioned before the Gulf War which was from 1990 to pre to the present because there was no date set by law or presidential proclamation. So technically you know anyone that is 100% service related disabled right now it's considered wartime so they should be exempt from our at least county municipal taxes. Um then you know like we don't have a resolution or an ordinance. That was one thing that I had checked going back. That was the one thing. Do we need to pass a resolution just to state that fact? I don't know. I think it wouldn't hurt to have a resolution just to state everything. But the nonwart time is what is hanging every everyone up then. That's that was the one thing I was trying to get past and there are other counties that have done it. So if they've done it Well, you're asking me, ask him if you can tell. Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Sabatino. Mr. Chair, uh uh would can I ask Miss McDermott to send the the other ordinances from the other counties? Sure. So we could take a look at them, send them out to us, and then maybe we could see where the discrepancies are with the one that we have on the agenda and and write a new one to conform to what the other counties are doing. That's a great question. I did take it. Do I have to spell that on? I did take it from um Tyogga County, but I can send out the one that is uh it was Pike County. Sorry, because there are seven counties

that do it. Um so I could send that over, but I just went right the same as that. I I would presume we're going to have this on a voting session in two weeks. So maybe submit it to our administration and have them submit it with our packets so we could review. One other thing, um and I know Mr. Clocker is uh I believe listening if he's still on or not. Um okay, but going back to the the statistics, okay, 21,000 veterans in the county right now. 1,039 of them are 100% disabled. 898 currently get the tax exemption. There's 141 remaining and only 20 of those right now are eligible to be able to get this because the other ones don't own homes. So, we're just talking about a small percentage of people. Um, I know maybe the money isn't the worry. Yes, that's something that we have to consider because that's what council does. We care about that. But the biggest thing is I think everybody's worried about the constitution, the state constitution on on the question. So, uh, go ahead, Miss Stevenson. Um, so yes. So, that's that's actually my question because if if Lacawana County and whatever other county has this already in place, does that mean they're violating the the Pennsylvania State Constitution? Well, I don't know. Obviously not. I don't know if we should hold Lacawana County up to be the beacon. The other counties, you could, but anybody who raised taxes 37% not having a good day. But but seriously, though, like the language in place, the rhetoric that's being used, does that mean they're somehow, you know, legally it's working in that county, but somehow they're not in compliance with the constitution? According to what Mr. Ren, that's what I was trying to get that explanation from him and Joanna I know wants to talk but uh he was explaining that it does go up to the agitant and agitant uh and so general and uh that gets approved in that office. So they're saying if it if

if we pass it for county council it still has to be approved. Julian I know uh go ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, the Constitution is the floor, which means we can't take away rights, and we're not taking away any rights. We're simply adding to the amount of people who can get it. Um, I really don't know why we've had to I I understand. It's frustrating to me that we have discussed this so often. Uh, and everybody seems to be in favor of it. We are using the same exact kind of resolution. Thank you, Jimmy. Uh, we're using the same exact kind of resolution. We're not the research that I have done that the discussions I have had with other attorneys it is not so long as we do not go beyond the scope of what the resolutions we have used that uh councilwoman Mcderman has used to build this so long as we don't go beyond that scope we are absolutely fine so I really think this discussion is over and I'd really like to see this on the next voting session and voted for this is like we're done we're good guys These they have not been sued. Everybody's fine. It's been implemented. We're following suit. I'd really like to just see this done. I'd like to see this go next session. Thank you very much. Thank you, M. Smith. Uh, Attorney Sche. Thank you. As I may have mentioned a time or two before, I do not get a vote, but somebody had brought up to the office, had read a newspaper article and said, "Can you look into this?" I think it was one of my assistants. So, I signed that out and Jared looked into it years ago. not on this. Uh I think it was when the prior

um veterans department head uh had a question, we looked into it and analyzed all the different um counties. Now the issue though I don't get a vote, I'm still I do get all the lawsuits we get and I do have to run compliance. So there is a conflict in the constitution versus what others have done and I understand what Joanna is saying but we were just giving a note so that you would understand what we had found. There's only one case on it. That case says you could do whatever you want to do as long as you don't go outside of the legislation. So there's a possibility that we'd be going outside the legislation. Will we have a problem? I don't know. But there's a possibility we would go out of that now when you take into consideration that and there's been bills that are coming up. So in Harrisburg they're discussing this issue and they may make a change. They may not. Again, we can't control that. But we know that they're talking about the issues. So if they were to take a stand on that and do what they should do and amend the legislation, then there'd be no problem and we'd be happy to go through. We're just giving council information to go on, right? So, if you're saying that in two weeks you want to pass it, so be it. That's a just we're giving you the information and you could look at the other municipalities. If the agitant general says we're allowing it to go through, that's fine. Now, I'd also we'd have to understand uh the gentleman that came in today and is talking about possibly losing his house. I don't think anybody's losing their house over county taxes when school taxes are three, four, five

times higher than our taxes. So if we do this, are we saving people if it's only us and not the municipality and the school district? So I don't know if anybody on council have discussed with colleagues in municipalities if there's a plan to follow if we do that. Otherwise, we're going to make a very minor dent in tax bills by passing that here. Thank you. Thank you, Attorney Sche. I I do have two comments I want to make. Um, personally, I don't see why there's a hangup with the state or federal or anything with the war versus nonwar time. I picture a service member, let's call her Jane Doe, sitting at Fort Bragg in 1970 at her desk and that's her permanent station and Vietnam wars going on overseas and let's say for some reason she got disabled, right? She would qualify under this rule. But let's say she's there five years later, there's no war going on. She becomes fully disabled 100%. she wouldn't qualify. I don't see why the distinction. She signed up to serve our country. U it's not her fault when the war is going on and when the war is not going on. I believe we should grant that exemption to her too in the the 1975 version and the 1970 version. Lastly, I want to say uh uh who put this together? Attorney who is it? Attorney Fantino. He made four recommendations at the end. Uh not for council to do this, but I think they're good recommendations. Number one, uh the administration should formally designate a point of contact within the assessor's office, tax assessor's office to monitor legal developments at the state level, particularly the pending legislation. Uh

also the uh administration should establish a periodic audit process. Maybe our controller does that, maybe not. To confirm ongoing eligibility of surviving spouses, especially concerning remarage status. Those are the points I brought up a couple times here in the past. Number three, develop educational outreach in cooperation with the DMV to ensure veterans and their families understand both their entitlements and obligations. And finally, absent any change in the applicable law, any action of county council regarding implementation of the disabled veteran tax exempt program must adhere to or remain within the confines of constitutional statutory interpretation cited above. I think those four recommendations are good recommendations. That's all I have to say on it. Anybody else? I think we discussed I think we discussed over and over again the fact that there are multiple checks on this multiple checks over multiple years it goes through m it was Mr. Clocker who said it goes up the chain and back down the chain again there's enough we have checks and balances I'd really like to see this on the voting session next time guys I anticipate it would be I don't know why it wouldn't Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, Miss McDermott. One final thing I'd like to say to that is if we all can give Alert a exemption, tax exemption, then I think we should be able to give it to our veterans. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for that. Uh if we're okay, we'll go on to the next the next item. Yes, sir. Uh Mr. Ross uh two weeks ago uh brought up during the worst session uh this the necessity of uh passing something with the CCAP conference and uh has to do with council members attending and getting expenses paid. So u we added that as item number 11 tonight. Mr. Hos, you said it, Mr. Chair. It's um it's in Seven Springs which is out in

the western part of the state this year. Everybody you've all been getting messages from CCAP. We get them all the time. It's $470 uh an individual for the 3-day conference. I guess it's actually three and a half days. So, what this does, according to the charter, it's section 2.05D. I sent you all an email at the break. So, you have that draft on there. But, um uh according to the charter, we have to get reimbursed for this. We'd pay on our own, get reimbursed appropriately with a positive vote from council. And um the policy also covers the mileage in the room and board for the three days. So, if anybody would be interested, I' I'd like to submit myself this year. I think I can make it. And um I don't see why anybody that wants to go should should be allowed to go as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Chairman. But if you have the time, you know, I've always found them very beneficial. I know several people went last year. I think they probably agree with me. Would anybody uh like to add to the discussion or question, Miss Stevenson? Quick question. Um what what are the dates for CCAP again? Is it the 14th and 15th? 17th or 20 sounds right, Miss 17? I just see an email on there. August. Yeah. August. Okay. Thank you. Sunday to Sunday to Wednesday. So now now's the time to ask any questions. So then we can put it on the voting session two weeks from now. Yes. Mr. Sabatino. Would we just automatically put the people that we nominated to be the voting members? I don't think so. I think it's a it's a personal scheduling thing. And anybody that wants to go, I would say go for it if you if you have the time. But it's usually the time is the more difficult thing to come up with, right? Um we start with the voting members. How about that? I'm because we should send our the people that we authorize to be voting members. Yeah. I mean the whole idea of the conference at the last day they take a vote and they they prioritize all the agenda for the upcoming year. So then the voting members get to actually vote on that at the end of the year. So yeah, it would be helpful but it's not necessary. Uh we would put the names two weeks from now in the resolution. So if anybody's interested uh you know please email John

Lombardo the chair and maybe copy Mr. Hos. Sure. Oh, you don't have to copy me. It's not my just want to make sure. Oh, how about Miss Lawrence? How about we involve How about we involve Mr. Lawrence? Um, I have one question, Mr. Hos. Oh, no. You say it's 470 per person. Yes. Could Could we cut that down if like you and I room together? Like, don't threaten the girl. Only if it's Jack and Jill bathroom, Mr. Thornton. That's That's all we got. Okay. Oh, two rooms. Just the registration fee. Okay. Uh, Miss Smith, do you have a question for once? No. Oh, it's got your light on. Sorry. Okay. Anybody else have uh Attorney Scheme? So, for us preparing the resolution uh you want just four blank spaces or is there might be might there be 10? I that's my wife's birthday. I can't go. Okay. All right. I think and then show of hands. Anybody who thinks they may want to go, you can always back out. You can always back out. All right. One, two, three, four, five. looks like five and the early bird registration is June 30th. So when I've gone and passed this years ago now, you you submit the credit card information, you you put your spot in and you get it back and county reimbures you. Okay. All right. But we won't know because everybody's going to have different mileage presumably. They're leaving from different places. So we can't put a number in. No, we'd have to just say that they can submit their bill eligible expense. Okay. There's a county line item in the county council we put in last budget cycle. So, I think it's $2,000. Okay. And, uh, Miss Stevenson. Um, yeah. So, that line item, what happens if we exceed the amount with participants attending the conference for reimbursement? If we exceed that $2,000 when we include mileage and and everything else, what happens then? You kick Harry out after the first night. No, serious already. Seriously, loser. Well, you could always make it a budget amendment, but if it passed, you know, obviously

meeting, I think we're okay. But if it went $2,400 instead of 2,000. Okay. And if we made that budget amendment, where would that money be coming from again? Where did the original For me, for me, the budget no issue. Okay. The budget's no issue for me. We'd have to go to budget and finance for that, right? I'm just talking about the legal part. Okay. All right. I I think we're ahead, Mr. Rosel. Okay. on. Okay. Well, five times 500 $2,500. Now, does that is the 470. Does that include the room, too? No, just the res just the registration. We don't we don't reimburse the room or we do. Uh, well, according I give you a draft resolution. That's all set to go. I would say yes. I didn't I never I never did before, but might help people be able to go. Six, Airbnb, the Scavenage Incorporated, all those properties out there. So, it's got to be by whatever we whatever the county requirements are. So, we can't have somebody stay at Hotel 6 and somebody else stay at the Marriott. All right. No, there's a nice hostel hostel down there. There's a I can't $20 Walmart tent. Okay. Any other Mr. Sabatino? Hi. Uh, I'm pretty sure that uh the Seven Springs is where like the conference is and they have the room and board like the lodging all in one spot, but I'm I'd have to double check that for you. I'm sure. I think everything is all in one place. CCAP has the blocks of rooms. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We need to reserve. Any other questions? Over here. Over here. Going once, going twice. Um, we're going to move No, we're going to move on to public comment. Uh there was a gentleman here wanted to comment again for 30 seconds. Did he go home? Oh, I told him he had three more

minutes. So, yes, sir. You want to get podium? You state your name, please again. This will be real quick. Um Jeffrey Conrad. Uh Jeffrey Conrad. Um, I just wanted to touch on something what uh the gentleman said about um how it would work with school taxes and municipal taxes. And this is just with my experience going through the process. Um, every school district and municipality said I got approved, no problem, no hiccups through the county went down, the application went down to Harrisburg. It is still up to the individual school district and municipality whether they honor that. Now, I've never heard of a case where they don't, but that was just to touch on um the gentleman's thought on that with getting in contact with each one. Well, that's up to the veteran to take the paperwork and actually go to the municipality and Burkheimimer and whoever it goes to. Um, the only other thing I'd like to say is I really appreciate the the support you guys are showing because in the veteran community, we did not think we had the support to be honest with you. Not from the veterans that I've spoken with. Um, which is why I came out and a lot of these veterans because we thought it was going to be a quick no because the it's generally thought of as it's all dollars and cents and money. So, I appreciate the fact that that uh the reception that we got here this evening and I did watch the last one on YouTube live. Um, and I appreciate Councilwoman Smith's sentiments that words do matter, but only if there's action behind it and I'm seeing action and I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. And mo most of us either Mr. Perry served and uh I know Miss McDerm your

husband and Um, my brother was in 20 years, my sister was in four years, uh, my uncles were in World War II, three of them. My grandfather World War I. I still have a helmet from World War I. We're all veteran supporters, I think. I have to say, I got your family in the service. Wow. In this country. Wow. That goes back quite a ways. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Miss Stevenson, just a quick question. Are is there anyone at the VA who's um advocating for some of the vets that are there to communicate with municipalities and school districts? At the VA itself, right, the VA, you go to the podium. Thank you. Y um at the actual VA itself, they are strictly a medical facility for somebody to put in for benefits. They go through some place like uh local VSOs, Mr. Clocker, you know, county representatives. Um just just to for instance, I got medically discharged in 2002 or three. I did not get a VA claim until 2022. I was nobody tells us that we're entitled to anything. Even after I got my claim and started getting my money, nobody told me until last year that I was property tax exempt. My father got out in 1988. He did not get a VA benefit until 2018 because nobody told him. They don't put this information out. So, when the vote goes through, I'd appreciate if you guys would get get the word out there because no, nobody does tell you, right? But as far as the VA, there are two, they're the same entity, but different. There's the medical side and the benefit side. Uh, nobody up here can really help you with benefits. You have to go through Mr. Clocker's office. Um, I don't remember the Anvets. Uh, they started in 1944 for this purpose. veterans trying to help other veterans navigate the system. Um, and then of

course American Legion, BFWs, all that. Thank you, sir. Apprec appreciate the information and I'm sure two weeks from now I expect the measure to pass and then I'm sure the media will get it in the papers. Uh, letting everybody in the county know that benefit is available. Um, thank you. Uh, can we move on to the end of public comment here? Uh, Mr. Griffith, go ahead. Um, I find it interesting that we're to Mr. Hos's point about WS city being a good neighbor. Really, seriously, we have Act 13 that we asked for money for the levy maintenance. How much money did we get? Zero. We had an election last year. We needed parking meters bagged for people to come in to vote. I personally called the city. I got no cooperation until I finally got the mayor on the phone and told him and got kind of indignant with him and he said, "Oh, we'll we'll give you exemption on the meters." I I appreciate the fact that we want to help everybody, but when are we going to start helping the people of this county? How about getting rid of the 10% penalty fee that happens in August for our taxpayers? Are we going to get rid of that? Can we do that at the next meeting? I mean, let's do it. Let's take the 10% away so if you don't pay your taxes by the end of phase, you don't pay a penalty. Let's be all about fixing things for the people of this county and stop being a good neighbor for everybody else. I don't think that Wils Bear City should we help them with their pension fund? They're 40% funded. Ours is 85. Let's give them some money. Let's help their pension. Where does it stop? I agree that, you know, they are the county seat. I agree they have issues with a sewer line. That's their problem. We have problems here. I don't see the city coming to help us. We just had a discussion about going to CCAP. I was Harry was laughing because I said, "Ask the city to give us the money to send

everybody to CCAP." How about that? That's only $2,500. He could afford that. Where does it stop? They sold the hotel Sterling lot. They got a pile of money for it and we got nothing for it. But that was our property at one time and we had a whole lot of money to rip it down. I get the fact that we want to be good neighbors. It's time for people to give to the county. Take care of the people of this county. Let's give the county taxpayers some relief. Where's the homestead exemption? We could work on that. Give them their 5 million back. Give them their exemption back. Harry's been working on that. We've been trying to get Let's help the people of this county. We're going to give exemptions to everybody except the people that pay the taxes. Let's try and do the best we can to help them. I'm not adverse to helping the city, but quite honestly, if they have a broken water mane, are we going to help them there, too? No interest for 5 years. I'd like to get that deal from them when we need money to pay our debt. We're 26 million in the hole. Why are we loaning anybody anything? Think about it. I don't think that's a good idea. Unless the city wants to come up and be part of the act 13 fund and and agree to what the committee when Mr. Thornton's committee agreed to to said we need to have a partnership on that levy fee that's costing us 50 $80,000 a year. We get nothing from anybody. We take care of the levies. We take care of everything because it's the right thing to do and we want to make sure the city looks good and the levies are maintained, but that doesn't negate them. They're charging us a sewer fee on a property right here on the levy for nothing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Um, anybody else here in the audience would like to speak? Is there anybody looks like on the Zoom? Really? We have Mark Rael. I thought you'd be in bed by now, Mark. Go ahead, Mark. Go ahead. Not really, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, not really. I'm I'm still alive and well

kicking and uh I'm very disappointed, Mr. chairman because I thought, you know, uh, you know, reasonable minds would prevail in terms of, you know, looking at alternative options that would benefit, uh, Wilks, that they could get it, uh, a Penvest loan for 1% interest. Mr. Chair, you and Mr. Lascavage know that Penvest program is a 1% interest loan program. And they also would have an availability to apply for on an emergency situation. If Mayor Brown uh what he said is, you know, is is indeed needed as an emergency, he could apply through uh representatives Eddie Day. Fashinsky and Senator Marty Flynn. I'm sure they would be happy to co-sponsor um you know for that uh application through DCEED through Penvest for 1%. I mean come on really I mean and Mr. Chairman, just one one other thing that uh council needs to be made aware of and the manager by giving this kind of loan for a sore project. You open up the floodgates for the three other cities and all the other municipalities because what you do for one, you must do for all. And that's not that's not a gripe. That's not a a you know like a shoot. That's that's a re that's reality because 76 municipalities, Mr. Chairman, in Luzar County deserve equal treatment for their citizens and for the municipalities that they live in by the county. You cannot just do it because of political expediency because it's an election year. Okay? And and please don't tell me that it's not because I think uh all of us that have uh an

inkling of political savviness knows what the real deal is. Okay, I understand it's an election year, but please let reasonable minds prevail in terms of alternative options that would benefit all the people instead of just pandering for for votes here and there just to just to win an election. I think that that would only be fair to all the residents of Luzern County. And I think the uh the homestead exemption should be looked at for the veterans if it can't be done on a standalone. Uh use the homestead exemption to have the veterans all veterans have an exemption on their primary residence. I think that would be worthwhile to look into. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Rabel. And uh for the record, I just want to state I'm absolutely not doing this for political expediency. Um, it's just the right thing to do. The sewer is collapsed. It's broke. It's 30 ft deep. And um, I just think it's our county seat and we have an obligation to help them out. But thank you for your comments. Anybody else on this? Mr. Lcavage, I have nothing to politically I I appreciate you. Appreciate you weighing in there, Mr. Luscavage. Is there anybody else out in the zoom? Okay. Do we have a motion to second? All those in favor say I. I. Post. Meetings adjourned. Thank you everybody.