The tailspin of the Citizens Fire Company came to an abrupt end last evening when council was formally notified by Tyrone Fire Department Chief Jim Beckwith that all operations of the 122-year-old company will cease.
\n\u201cThey are definitely out-of-business,\u201d said Beckwith.
\nThe decision to suspend operation comes on the heels of a myriad of problems with the company, most notably financial difficulty and lack of leadership.
\nRecently, council notified the company to cease holding controversial youth dances at the Citizens Social Hall on Friday nights or tax-payer funding would be cut-off. In Tyrone Borough Police Chief Joe Beachem\u2019s report to council, he called the dances a \u201chaven for trouble\u201d and said since October, there have been 52 \u201cdirect\u201d complaints about activities associated with the dance.
\nOn top of this, three company leaders announced last week that they were resigning from the company; Chief and President Dave Lynch, Assistant Chief Mike Beckwith and Treasurer Amanda Snyder.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re not jeopardizing the safety of the community with this suspension,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cWe have other engines in the borough (at Hookies and Neptune) and Hookies will be making all the rescue calls. Until these guys can get their act together, they will no longer be operating in the area.\u201d
\nThe borough\u2019s solicitor, Larry Clapper, informed council it was now able to pull fire company funding because Citizens didn\u2019t heed warning to stop holding the dances. A dance was held Friday, but acting company chief Chris Hammond said the building was leased to Travis Hammond and not for Citizens Fire Company use.
\nClapper said the intent of Friday\u2019s dance was the same, and informed council that a formal letter would be drafted notifying the company of the termination of funding.
\nMore than a month ago, Beachem served the company with notice to get things under control at the dances or they would be canceled. Then two weeks ago, the police department said the situation at the dances hadn\u2019t changed and served notice to cancel all dances or funding would be pulled.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to stop the kids from having fun around here. We just need to protect them and the rest of the community,\u201d said Beachem. \u201cThe atmosphere down there and the lack of control has caused a lot of these problems.\u201d
\nBeachum said in the past seven months, there have been seven assaults, nine underage drinking violations, 15 disorderly conduct incidents and 21 other calls, which included things such as curfew and loitering violations. He said they all were directly related to the dances at the social hall.
\n\u201cAnd that doesn\u2019t even show all the other problems that go along with it,\u201d said Beachum. \u201cAfter the dances are over, criminal activity in Tyrone increases.\u201d
\nHammond explained to Beachem that in the past month, changes have been made at the dances. He said they no longer allowed kids to leave the social hall and return or carry containers into the dances. He also said members of the fire company would patrol the property outside the doors of the social hall.
\n\u201cWe also call the police for any incidents that arise,\u201d said Hammond.
\nBeachem explained that fire company members calling the police for unruly activity is not enough to curb the problem at the dances.
\nDave Gill, a resident of State College, grew up in Tyrone and still visits his mother regularly on Ninth Street. He explained to council that three dances a week were held in Tyrone when he was a kid, and he didn\u2019t want to see the kids with nothing to do now.
\n\u201cI\u2019m really concerned about the youth here in Tyrone,\u201d said Gill to Beachem. \u201cWhat can we do about this?\u201d
\nBeachem explained the Tyrone Police Department does not have the funding to provide police coverage at the dance, and Beckwith added that if council would assign police to that section of town for a period of time on Friday evening, other taxpayers of the borough would be without protection during those times.
\n\u201cWe just don\u2019t have the money in our budget to do that,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cIt should be the responsibility of the people holding the dance to make sure there is no trouble there.\u201d
\nHammond told The Herald that he and representatives of the company attended last evening\u2019s meeting to ask the borough for another chance.
\n\u201cWe know things haven\u2019t been that good, but we\u2019ve been getting things in order,\u201d said Hammond, who also provided the musical entertainment at the dances. \u201cWe\u2019ve put those new rules in and were hoping the council would see what we\u2019re trying to do. I guess they didn\u2019t want to see it like we do.\u201d
\nThere has been no early indication what will happen with Citizens Fire Company or its social hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The tailspin of the Citizens Fire Company came to an abrupt end last evening when council was formally notified by Tyrone Fire Department Chief Jim Beckwith that all operations of the 122-year-old company will cease. \u201cThey are definitely out-of-business,\u201d said Beckwith. The decision to suspend operation comes on the heels of a myriad of problems […]<\/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-46501","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\/46501","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=46501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}