Changes regarding the Tyrone Fire Department continue into the New Year with decisions made at the last night\u2019s borough council meeting.
\nIn the last year, the department has seen the closing of Citizen\u2019s Fire Company and the resignation of long-time Fire Chief Jim Beckwith. Council decided to eliminate the fire chief\u2019s position last week.
\nInstead, it established a new fire committee headed by three members including the chiefs of the two remaining fire companies along with a third member who is not part of the fire department.
\nThe third member was designated to be a current member of council. On Monday, the borough voted to appoint councilman James Grazier to serve on the committee after he had agreed to accept the responsibility.
\nOther changes regarding the fire department included council accepting the resignation of Jeffrey Watson as the borough\u2019s fire marshall. Watson resigned since he has accepted a position as the assistant fire chief of the Blazing Arrow Hook and Ladder Fire Company. According to policy, he is not permitted to hold both positions at the same time.
\nIn his resignation letter to council, Watson recommended former Fire Chief Jim Beckwith for the fire marshal position. Councilman Bill Fink suggested council should look at Beckwith\u2019s qualifications for the position. He questioned if Beckwith was able to handle certain aspects of the fire marshal\u2019s job.
\nCouncilman Watson pointed out he had served in the position and believed Beckwith had even more qualifications and expertise to handle the position than he did. He did say Beckwith would be required to verify certain education and training background which is customary.
\nCouncil voted on the matter with Fink casting a \u201cno\u201d vote since other members wouldn\u2019t agree to checking on Mr. Beckwith qualifications any further.
\nThe former fire chief held that position for 28 years and has been a member of the department for more than 40 years.
\nTyrone Borough revisited another issue when solicitor Larry Clapper announced council needed to re-establish a board of health. Clapper noted the board once existed, but since it had never been actively used a previous council had eliminated it in 1994.
\nThe need for a board of health came up last year when council adopted a tattoo parlor ordinance which placed certain restrictions on those wanting to operate such establishments in the borough. Once the ordinance was adopted, council named four appointees (all council members) to the board and tabled a decision on a fifth member who was supposed to have a medical background.
\nLast night, council voted unanimously to re-establish a board of health with the adoption of an ordinance. They also named the four council members and the fifth person to the board.
\nThe borough agreed to name Christel Grazier, a registered nurse in the trauma unit of Altoona Hospital to the board. The council members named were Jennifer Bryan, Sharon Danaway, William Latchford and J.R. Watson.
\nIn other business, council took the following actions:
\n\u2022agreed to make final payment to Kreiger Contracting in the amount of $12,859. The company had honored the borough\u2019s request to re-paint the in-line hockey rink after being requested to do so before the borough would release the final payment. The work has since been completed;
\n\u2022through resolution, designated borough officials authorized to sign PENNDOT documents on behalf of Tyrone;
\n\u2022designated new Borough Manager Nathan George to be authorized to sign EPA documents;
\n\u2022heard an update from engineer Ray Myers on the status of Schell Run improvements;
\n\u2022agreed to grant handicap and pastor parking to those making recent requests to the borough;
\n\u2022agreed to close out a project at the wastewater treatment plant by by deducting recent costs the borough had incurred and forwarding the remaining amount of money the borough had held for the project back to the Howard Robson Company; and
\n\u2022discussed problems with dog waste in borough parks and on the street and problems with disabled or abandoned vehicles in Tyrone.
\nThe council also acted on a matter tabled from a previous meeting.
\nLast week, councilwoman Jennifer Byran asked for a cost assessment on legal advertising in a newspaper other than The Daily Herald. Last night, council was presented with a cost sheet and Byran agreed the price of advertising in another paper would not be cost effective. Other council members also reviewed the price list.
\nBryan then revealed she wanted the borough to consider changing papers for its legal advertising for reasons unrelated to cost.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t like their reporting, the inaccuracies, the way they have treated council,\u201d said Bryan regarding The Daily Herald.
\nSolicitor Larry Clapper revealed a memo he drafted had been distributed to council. It described a meeting which occurred last involving Mayor Patricia Stoner, Clapper and Daily Herald General Manager Chris Lash. Issues between the council and the newspaper were discussed and council indicated certain stipulations had been agreed to by both parties.
\nAt first Bryan said she would still vote no to retaining The Daily Herald as the newspaper for legal notice publication. When the vote was actually taken she voted \u201cyes\u201d adding only if the paper honored what was agreed to in the memo.
\nThe internal memo was not distributed to the public nor this newspaper.
\n\u201cI would like to simply review the memo\u201d said Lash when contacted at his office this morning.
\nThe council voted unanimously to retain The Daily Herald for its legal advertising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Changes regarding the Tyrone Fire Department continue into the New Year with decisions made at the last night\u2019s borough council meeting. In the last year, the department has seen the closing of Citizen\u2019s Fire Company and the resignation of long-time Fire Chief Jim Beckwith. Council decided to eliminate the fire chief\u2019s position last week. Instead, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}