With more than 20 years of service on Tyrone Borough Council under his belt, council member Jim Beckwith is seeking another term as a representative of Tyrone.
\n\u201cI have spent about 20 years on council,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cI enjoy trying to help the community. I want to continue to do so.\u201d
\nBeckwith not only serves as a council member, but he also serves as the borough fire chief.
\nAdding jobs in Tyrone is one of the many issues facing the community.
\n\u201cWe need jobs here,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cWe need to get the paper mill open again. We are in the process of looking for another borough manager. We need to find a good borough manager to come in and run the borough.\u201d
\nWith 20 years of service on the council, Beckwith has been part of many decisions that have benefited the Tyrone community.
\n\u201cSome things you do because they were mandated like redo the reservoirs,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cWe have expanded the sewer plant and added the water treatment plant to make sure the purification of our water is up to the federal mandate. Sometime the federal agencies step in and you don\u2019t have much of a choice. That was the case with the water treatment and we took care of what they wanted.
\n\u201cIt was good to get an agreement with the Northern Blair Regional Sewer Authority to the satisfaction for all sides. The Streetscape project was a good thing for our community. It was done without local funds. If Tyrone doesn\u2019t get it, somebody else would. There were some people who said that the Streetscape money should have been used for Washington Avenue. We looked into grants for getting that project done. The grant money just isn\u2019t available for that now. It is on the list of projects the council is working on.\u201d
\nThe project that Beckwith has championed was the new park equipment for Reservoir Park.
\n\u201cI have fought for that for years, and we finally got it done,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cThe park is used not only by people of Tyrone, but many from out of town. People come from all over to use it. Upgrading the park was a big step and I was happy for it to take place.\u201d
\nBeckwith also says that the City Hotel Park is a beautiful addition to Tyrone.
\n\u201cThe old City Hotel was a fire hazard,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cIt was replaced with a beautiful project that was constructed through donations. I fought to try to make sure that no borough money was used to get the project accomplished. In the end, we used some borough money, but very little.\u201d
\nThe council faces two upcoming tasks… the hiring of a new borough manager and the finalization of a new police contract.
\n\u201cWe have requirements with education and experience for the job,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cWe are probably going to use the same requirements we used when we hired Al (Drayovitch). We lucked out and got a good guy with 20 years experience when we hired Al. We hope we can find someone as good to come in and take the reigns.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t say how close we are on the police contract, but I hope it is close,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cThe contract will be very beneficial to the community if it is signed.\u201d
\nBeckwith says that he is running for council because he enjoys serving the community and has no personal agendas.
\n\u201cThere are two things that can be discussed in executive sessions they are personnel and legal matters,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cI can assure you and the people of Tyrone that I have never sat in on a meeting that violated the Sunshine Act. If we did such a thing, we can be held liable. Why would we take that chance? We have had a lot of executive sessions recently. We also have been in contract negotiations with both unions. There are a lot of discussions to get a contract done. You never get a contract done in one meeting. We have been negotiating not one but two contracts.
\n\u201cWe have had several executive sessions on personnel matters and we aren\u2019t allowed to give that information out,\u201d Beckwith continued. \u201cThere are legal matters that can\u2019t be made public. There are people involved and we can\u2019t mention their names because we would be in violation of the privacy act.\u201d
\nBeckwith responded to Bill Fink\u2019s charge that council meetings are decided before they happen.
\n\u201cWe get a workbook the Friday before the work session,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cWe have Saturday and Sunday to go over the bills we have to pay and some of the other things that are on the agenda. I have asked many questions in the meetings. I\u2019d like to know what we are supposed to be hiding.\u201d
\nBeckwith will be on the Republican ballot in the May primary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With more than 20 years of service on Tyrone Borough Council under his belt, council member Jim Beckwith is seeking another term as a representative of Tyrone. \u201cI have spent about 20 years on council,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cI enjoy trying to help the community. I want to continue to do so.\u201d Beckwith not only serves […]<\/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-47138","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\/47138","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=47138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}