Jessup News Post - June 2009

Township Meeting :

The meeting was scheduled for 7 PM on 3June 2009. The meeting times will be reset to the old start time of 7:30 PM beginning in July.

The stone crushing operation was a success with a large amount of stone crushed in 6 days. The resulting modified and 3A tonnage was obtained at considerable savings and is being used for the annual road maintenance. Personnel changes were made to improve the road crews.

Flags have been placed at veterans' graves by a volunteer.

A citizen expressed concern about gas companies doing seismic surveys and laying pipelines along township road rights of way. Supervisors stated that no permits have been requested or granted. They do not plan to permit any pipelines along roads; but expect to consider pipelines that cross roads from one leased tract to another. They stated that companies do not ask them about seismic surveys; they just do them.

The next township meeting will be Wednesday,1 July, at 7:30 PM.

NTC Meeting :

Jessup hosted the first (and perhaps last) quarterly NTC meeting on Thursday, 18June, at 7 PM. The meeting was brief ending with an agreement to meet again in two months.


Bill Stewart introduced 3 agenda items.
First was a discussion of DCED's request for an audit of the three year planning and zoning grant funds, covering July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2007. The requested audit is a "Yellow Book" audit which requires special credentials, not possessed by most auditors. Mr. Brian Kelly was retained to do the audit at an estimated $2500. Mr. Kelly will also arrange for an extension of the audit deadline from 30 June to end July 2009. A vote was passed to do so. Interestingly, the treasurer's report showed a recent bill paid against that account for services by Mr Helfrich.

Second was a discussion of a MOA with Montrose Boro and their bill for the use of land under the NTC metal equipment building on their land. The building houses composting equipment, used by some of the NTC towns. It was agreed to have a separate meeting of the "composters" to decide on the MOA and bill ( about $350 for usage and legal fees). That meeting will also address the allocation of charges for compost equipment maintenance.

Third was a mention of the PSATS award given to the NTC for their efforts to do multi-municipal planning and zoning. Silver Lake agreed to hold and display the award.

With the formal business over, a citizen asked about the status of zoning. Bill Stewart said some were still considering it. Township representatives confirmed that Apolacon, Franklin, Jessup, Liberty, Middletown, and Silver Lake were not going to zone. No township, of the remaining six, stated that they intended to zone. It was noted at the March meeting that the original multi-municipal inter-governmental cooperation agreement, was never signed by all and, hence, the resulting draft ordinance could only be used as the basis for individual zoning ordinances , presumably, after review and adoption by the individual township planning commissions.

At Bill Stewart's request, it was agreed to have the next meeting at Middletown on 20 August at 7 PM to allow for discussion of the DCED audit. It was stated that meetings might be held or not held in future on the planned schedule and that interested people could find out by viewing the NTC website or asking their township office. Alternatively, the County Planning Office could be called to find the time and place of future meetings.

County Gas Task Force Meeting :

The meeting was scheduled for 9:30 AM, Thursday 25 June, prior to the Economic Development committee meeting at 10AM. It began late and continued into the subsequent meeting. The meeting did not add much more information than presented last month. The Bradford Progress Authority is trying to induce companies to come here for a company-to-company "Expo" to get better exchange of gas company needs and local company capabilities. This may occur by the Fall. Another "Expo" may be held next year to address workforce needs.

Joann Kowalski noted that a PSU study indicates that a single well generates the equivalent of about 11.5 jobs for one year. The required job skills are about 25% College level and 75% High School level. Reference information can be found at www.pct.edu.msetc/.

I asked in anyone would be interested in having gas well and pipeline locations easily available on a map. Many seemed interested. I suggested to the group and to Commissioner Allen that the county could provide that capability at no cost to viewers and at no cost or low cost to the county.

At no cost, simply publish on the county website an Internet reference to existing websites; and at low cost, extend a current Google Map Application, which shows permitted and production wells and major pipelines, to provide more information such as access roads and gathering pipelines. The extensions can be added by getting GPS locations from the gas companies. A full discussion of the County Gas Map Proposal is available in my 23 June blog post.