After 20 years in office, Blair County Commissoner Donna Gorrity wants to continue serving and has announced that she will seek her sixth term in office on the Democratic ticket.
\n\u201cI just love this position,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cIt\u2019s a position where I believe I can help the community. I believe in public service. I still have a great deal of enthusiasm for this job and believe that my knowledge and expertise that I have built up at this time can be helpful to people.\u201d
\nThe lone democrat on the Blair County Board of Commissioners, Gorrity has made an impact in her 20 years and she says the completion of Interstate 99 will greatly help the county.
\n\u201cI think that I-99 is one additional tool that we will have in our economic development tool kit,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cI think the ability to have transportation enhanced into and out of the area will probably be very helpful. With every positive there is a negative side. I do believe that I-99 will help from an economic development standpoint to have a four-lane limited access highway through the entire area.\u201d
\nGorrity was asked about the Logan Town Centre project that is being debated in Logan Township.
\n\u201cI think overall there is a positive impact from a project like that,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cIt will bring a lot of jobs at all levels of employment to the area. It will bring additional shopping opportunities and people from outside the area to use the centre. I think it is a positive benefit. Certainly the neighborhoods that will be impacted will have to have some abatement to minimize that impact as much as possible, but overall I think it is a good project.\u201d
\nIn her five terms as commissioner, Gorrity has championed the human services causes for the county.
\n\u201cI think that our human services agencies and there are numerous agencies that do something related to the field are working together a little bit better and have the tools to work together through some of the iniatives that I have been involved with,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cThe Human Services Coordination office at the county, the Communities that Care project, the creation of our family resource center and we have worked with some of the school districts in the county to create a a mini-family center to work with pre-school age parents. This will help get kids more ready for school.
\n\u201cThere is certainly more to do,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cA lot of the programs that I have helped bring in are getting rolling like the Nurse-Family Partnership program. We worked with Huntingdon County and the Home Nursing Agency to write an application with our support and guidence to the state and got funded to allow nurses to work with first time pregnant moms to some degree with others in the households to work with the mom and learn proper parenting techniques.
\n\u201cHelp her take care of her own health and the health of her child. The nurses will work with the mom until the child is two so the parents can learn a lot during that time. Hopefully those kids, and research has shown, that kids are exposed to that type of guidence or the parents are exposed to that guidence in the early formative years are much healthier, more stable and less prone to drug and alcohol involvement. Less prone to juvinile delinquency and more prone to school success.\u201d
\nDuring Gorrity\u2019s five terms, Blair County Ballpark was built, the Blair County Court House has been renovated, there have been expansion projects at the Blair County Airport and the Blair County Jail and there is still more to be done.
\n\u201cThe juvinile detention home is the building project that remains that needs attention,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cWhat we are using as a juvenile detention facility is an old house that is far from an ideal situation that we need to have in a secure enviornment while awaiting their hearings.\u201d
\nGorrity said there is the possibility of another democrat joining the ticket, but has not felt like an outsider being the lone democrat on the board.
\nGorrity would like to see more schools do what the Tyrone School District has done in its agreement with Pyramid Healthcare.
\n\u201cSome of these troubled kids may not be appropriate to be in a mainstream school for a period of time, but the vast majority of them will go back to their same homes, their same schools, but we need to help them be better when they are removed,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to teach them new coping skills, better appreciation of why they should be in school, why they should complete school and how to better interact with their friends families and so forth.\u201d
\nBlair County hasn\u2019t seen a tax increase in years, but Gorrity will not put out the \u201cno tax increase pledge.\u201d
\n\u201cThe budget is extremely tight and we have been pursuing where we can various grants to fund programs,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cWe are getting some money from the state for the prison expansion project. We are trying to maximize those opportunities. A lot of those grants have match or time constraints. So it takes a great deal of juggling and creativity to make it work.
\n\u201cI doubt that we are going to be able to withstand a no tax increase enviornment for much longer.\u201d she continued. \u201cOne thing that I believe that needs done is a reassessment. That is very controversial and it isn\u2019t likely to happen unless we get sued to do it.\u201d
\nGorrity will be on the Democratic party ticket in the May primary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After 20 years in office, Blair County Commissoner Donna Gorrity wants to continue serving and has announced that she will seek her sixth term in office on the Democratic ticket. \u201cI just love this position,\u201d said Gorrity. \u201cIt\u2019s a position where I believe I can help the community. I believe in public service. I still […]<\/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-47229","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\/47229","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=47229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}