A Tea Party for The Nation's Birthday

This was a great Fourth of July!

The sun was shining and the rain was not falling. We were able to get our horses out for an hour of trail riding along green pathways and mountain vistas.

We went to the first - and thus far, only - Tea Party in Susquehanna County. It was quite an event and we have the photos that show it. Any time you get more people to show up in a field than there are hay bales, it's a success.

I counted over a hundred folks and that's a lot for us. Admittedly, some of us left early - it may be a holiday, but the animals still need to be fed.

The talks at the Tea Party were on target, expressing our feelings about a government that has abandoned those who work hard and save for those who expect a bailout for not working or saving. We had adults discussing that; we had children talking about history and work as the key to success in America. We had some good posters.

None of us want to pass a huge debt on to our children and grandchildren. We want the government to stop the insanity of going deeper into debt to "fix" the economic problems caused by prior unconscionable debt and loan policies.

The "party" location in South Montrose is notable itself. It is a field that was converted into a memorial by the Crisman family for their son, Daniel, who died in the 9/11 attack and then extended for all those who lost their lives in that attack. Their names are engraved on stone tablets in a semi-circle around the area in which the speakers addressed us.

We are rural Americans. We remember the sacrifices that were made and the families that still bear the burdens. Not just our neighbors; but throughout America. We are disappointed in the politicians and leaders who don't share our faith in ourselves to meet the future with our own industry, wisdom , and patriotism.

Some speakers called for leaders, who believe in us, to come forward and identify themselves; feeling that there were no such leaders and we need to find new ones. I agree that there are few, but not none. We need to find each other.

That brings me to my final action this 4th of July. After reading Governor Palin's resignation speech several times at SarahPAC (also on video here ), I have contributed to her PAC and the Alaska Trust Fund that pays her personal legal bills from baseless attacks. Regardless of what some prominent public commentators may say, I believe that she is not running from the fight or abandoning a political career. I believe she is choosing to abandon "politics as usual" to pursue an independent path to break the current political bureaucracy's hold on America.

I hope to see more of her on the political scene as a strong independent voice for bringing us back to the America that we "Tea Party" folks want. Her goals for America are straightforward and match mine : Free Enterprise; Smaller Government; Strong National Security; and Energy Independence. I believe these are the prime priorities for our future.

It's been a great 4th of July. Good weather; good horses; good people seeking a way ahead for America; and a real "Stand-Up" leader making a hard choice for our sake.

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.

County Gas Map Proposal

My June 1 post, "Mapping County Gas Data", asked a simple question : why can't we use Google Maps to create an adequate county gas data GIS capability quickly and inexpensively?

The question remains unanswered; but, maybe I wasn't very clear about what constitutes quick, doable and adequate.

So, I'll explain more and demonstrate some features of a proposed capability that can be obtained at No Cost to Low Cost to the county. It also will allow citizens and county agencies to access accurate map based information on permitted and producing gas wells, pipelines, and other data at no cost.

Really - "No Cost" ?? "Low Cost" ?? Well, Yes, really !

But it does depend on what we demand in terms of accuracy, currency and completeness, and ownership of the data. I'll discuss these items later; first, here is the No-Low Cost proposal.

No cost is simple. Use what already exists and is widely available on the Internet. Low cost means augmenting an existing capability with more data. Both capability levels are based on use of a Google Map Application with all the built-in features of Google maps provided free by Google, including tutorials on how to add features to one's own map application.

There is an existing application developed by a self-proclaimed technology geek who enjoys real-time mapping applications. You can visit his website at Susquehanna County - Gas Exploration Maps to examine different features and map scales. His maps cover Susquehanna County and several adjacent counties in PA and NY. They provide data on permitted and producing wells, major pipelines and compression stations. He updates them monthly or semi-monthly. They are reasonably complete and accurate.

Simply using this application is the No Cost option. The county should publicise it on a county website so people would know where to find it.

For the Low Cost option, the county could deal with this individual to get more information in his data base or to be allowed to maintain a comparable version of his application which the county would update and extend. An obvious extension would be to add small well gathering pipelines and well access roads based on data from the gas companies. If this data were provided in simple GPS coordinates, it would be easy to include in the Google map application.

There you have it - a basic Gas Data Map capability at No to Low Cost with easy Internet access.

Let's demonstrate the "No Cost" option by some Google Map screen shots, starting with this one, County Gas Map 1, that show the county and gas industry information. The Blue east-west line is the Tennessee Gas Pipeline; red balloons are the locations of permitted gas wells; green balloons locate producing well locations; newly permitted pipelines are shown as blue flags; other icons locate other gas activities.

The second screen shot, County Gas Map 2, zooms to a smaller scale map to show the wells in relation to local roads. We can reduce the scale more and get closer by sliding the Google map scale indicator in the + direction. At this scale we can see a red triangle that depicts the location of a gas compression station.

Clicking the mouse on any symbol, e.g.. a green balloon, causes an info bubble to pop-up with descriptive information on well ID, production or other data.The pop-up for the green balloon directly above the red triangle states it is the Teel 5 well by Cabot, facility ID 700047, the first production well in NE PA. The pop-up bubble for the balloon to the right of it identifies it as Black 2H well by Cabot, Facility ID 706268, which produced 8.3Mmcf/d with a 4 stage frac on 3-3-09.

The information inside an information bubble is whatever the map developer wants to put there. In addition, each bubble has a Google feature that allows you to enter your current location and get a route map and driving directions from your location to the well (bubble)location. Since this is a Google Map application, all the Google map features are available. We could shift from the standard map format, shown above, to one that overlays the data on a terrain map or on satellite imagery. Of course, the satellite imagery would only show features present when the image was taken, such as trees, fields, ponds, and buildings.

So, now lets discuss those mapping performance terms and what they imply for costs to enhance the existing gas data map application.

Accuracy means how precisely the gas location data is measured and plotted on the map. If we demand survey level accuracy, the map capability will be costly and take a while to create. If we can live with accuracy equal to a standard GPS - based automobile or handheld navigation system, we can have a capability fast and at no cost to low cost. I believe that level of accuracy is adequate.

Currency means how timely the plotted data is; for example, if a new well permit is issued, do we want it to be plotted and the map updated within a day? or a week? or would a month be timely enough? Completeness means how much new data is captured and plotted on a timely basis; must it be 100% or is 80-90% enough? Since we have nothing now, I suggest that getting "most" data updated on the map one or twice a month is adequate.

Going from "most" to all or almost all takes us from No to Low Cost or more; going from once or twice a month to daily has the same effect.

Ownership of the data means who has control of the data base and the mapping application. If we demand that the county own it all, it will cost money and employee time. If we are willing to use a product owned and maintained by a third party, then our cost is none to low, depending on what we require of the third party in terms of currency, completeness and assured accessibility to the map application.

Bottom Line - I propose that the county use the above existing application "as is" for an immediate no cost capability. Publicize this on a county website for citizen access.

To gain more capability, define what additional information is needed and conduct two negotiations. First, negotiate with the application developer to add more information in a timely fashion either by him or by a partnering arrangement with the county, possibly by maintaining a county version. Second, negotiate with the gas companies to get timely access road and pipeline data in a format for easy entry into the map application.

Update - I should also reference this other primary source of information on Gas Wells in Susquehanna County PA. The main website is at RLSTORE.COM . It has considerable data on current well activity and maps of well sites. Although the maps lack the scaling and manipulation features of a Google Map application, the data is updated frequently and is available for an $18 annual subscription.

Mapping County Gas Data

My last post discussed the May 28 Gas Force meeting and noted that the county no longer has a GIS capability and could not map gas pipelines, access roads and well locations. I found that surprising since the Penn State Land Analysis Lab had trained the county on a GIS system many years ago and much of the county was mapped by an intern. Way back then, the Penn State Lab was working on a consumer friendly interface to GIS information.

A user friendly Geographic Information System (GIS) would be useful now to keep track of the new gas exploration data. So why can't we get one? Maybe the Penn State lab has some new tools to help.

Then again, maybe we already have a free GIS available . Maybe the real question is : why can't we use Google Map Applications to do the job?

Google Maps is a very user friendly, very large GIS, available free to anyone who wants to design and maintain a Google Map Application.

Some folks have already done so, mapping gas well permits, producing gas wells, major pipelines, and other data on Google Maps. To see a local product, link to Susquehanna County - Gas Exploration Maps . This site, and several other online maps, was developed by "Railroad - RR", a self-described Techno Geek, who is very into maps and real-time data sharing. He maintains it with new data every month or so. There are other interested smart people who do this sort of thing for fun or profit. They gather data from county or state offices where permits are filed.

This information is accessible by anyone with a laptop and internet connection. If the county wants a comparable simple GIS for gas information, this seems like a place to start. If we can define what we want represented, we should be able to find someone to create a new, or modify an existing, map application.

As for populating the data base with new information, define a suitable format for data entry and ask gas companies to provide the data. They may be willing to do so and to use the resulting maps. Or the county could require road access and pipeline data as a public safety measure if we do not already have it.

So, back to my basic question, why can't we use Google Maps to create a county gas data GIS capability? And do it fast and inexpensively ?

Jessup News Post - May 2009

Township Meeting

At a special meeting on 28 April, the township decided to accept a bid for crushing blue stone at the township site and a bid for insurance.

The regular meeting was held on 6 May. There was a brief summary of items from the recent PSATS meeting. Apparently, there is continued pressure from the state to consolidate townships or force more coordination. Most townships officials feel there is good coordination and the state's help is not needed.

Two traffic concerns were discussed. One is a long-standing problem with a resident-business that blocks a local road with stone pallets and trucks. Possible enforcement options were discussed. The second concern was raised by a resident about excessive speeding on a dirt road near homes. Discussion centered on posting a 25 mph limit for that road segment.

The next township meeting will be held on June 3 at 7PM. Additionally, Jessup will host the first quarterly meeting of the NTC on June 18 at 7PM.

Other Meetings

The county gas task force met at 9:30 AM on May28, prior to the economic development board meeting. The meeting centered around items presented by the Central Bradford Progress Authority which supports the task force and the board. Information about the CBPA activities and newsletters can be found at their website.

The discussion continued into the formal board meeting along with a number of other agenda items. The CBPA is gathering information from several sources and direct contacts with gas companies. The material they handed out can be obtained from the Commissioners office. There is a new DEP fact sheet coming out that defines the DEP and Conservation Office roles in monitoring Marcellus wells; for the most part, DEP is in charge of permitting and monitoring.

CBPA is planning to have an "Expo" to foster better understanding of gas company needs and of local sources to supply those needs. A key goal is get more gas related economic activity performed locally by local people. As an example of the problem, some local people obtained water trucks to provide hauling services for well fracing, but their business was not consistent and the gas companies have brought in outfits from other states. The companies have very rigid standards for this and other activities and prefer to deal with a prime supplier who understands the standards and can handle load variations. Hence the need for more specific communications.

A suggestion was made about getting local suppliers to coordinate their activities and offer services through a single Point of Contact to the gas companies to simplify the companies management of suppliers.

There is interest in developing new business opportunities by using some of the gas produced here for local commercial activities. Development of gas-generated electricity is especially attractive and some companies (Claverack was mentioned) are interested in this prospect.

Bob Templeton mentioned that there are two compression sites - one in Springville and one in Rush. It is expected that there will be more activity this year along the route 706 corridor. It also seems that there is no county Geographic Information System (GIS) capability to map well sites, access roads, and pipeline routes, even if provided by the companies. Knowing the location of access roads is important if emergency action is needed; but the planned road routes often change as the well site is developed. Several years ago, the county developed a GIS capability with the help of the Penn State Land Analysis Laboratory. Penn State has a Geospatial Technology program that might be able to help the county .The board asked that the commissioners look into what GIS capability we may still have and what could be obtained.

The CBPA handout included a fact sheet by DEP. There is quite a bit more information from DEP about the Marcellus Shale at this PA DEP website which has a page full of informative links to reports, maps and fact sheets. These range from very brief items to hundred page reports.

Among the better longer items, listed under the FAQs heading, is this new (April 2009) US DOE primer on Marcellus Shale (Gas_Primer_2009.pdf ). I've only skimmed it, but it has a lot of good information.

There are also 1-page maps showing recent well permits and total wells drilled through April 2009. The map of Marcellus wells reveals an interesting line of west-east sites from mid - Tioga County through Bradford County to the heavy heavy concentration of wells in the southwest quarter of Susquehanna County. Through April 2009, there were 497 Marcellus well permits and 1817 non-Marcellus permits issued in the state. That 21% Marcellus permit ratio is quite high and lends credibility to the forecast of substantial activity for the rest of the year into 2010.

Cabot has drilled several horizontal wells which exhibit high pressure and flow. One early well began at 6.4 million cubic feet (mmcf) per day and was producing 4.3 mmcf after 105 days. Two more recent ones showed different decline rates. One well had initial production of 8.3 mmcf and declined to 4.1 mmcf after 60 days; the other began at 8.8 mmcf and declined to 8.0 mmcf after 60 days. More data will be needed to establish confidence in expected decline rates and steady state production; but the initial data is very encouraging.

An interesting observation about the combined gas force - economic board meeting was that there was a good deal of citizen interaction and the focus stayed on useful information. That's a good sign for a starting effort. Currently, the gas force meeting starts at 9:30AM in the small main level conference room. Then the group moves to the large lower conference room for the full economic board meeting at 10AM. Meetings are held on the fourth Thursday of each month.

New PA Supreme Court Assessment Ruling

This Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article discusses the recent state Supreme Court ruling that Allegheny County must reassess because it is taxing homes based on their 2002 worth, which is no longer accurate. With over 500,000 homes in the county, which includes Pittsburgh, the cost of reassessment is estimated to exceed $40 million.

The ruling is causing a lot of concern in the western counties near Pittsburgh. But should we care in Susquehanna County? Maybe.

According to the article, Supreme Court Justice Max Baer's concurring opinion to the court's order suggested setting a statewide standard of how accurate assessments need to be. That could take the heat off local officials. Under Baer's proposal, Allegheny, Westmoreland and 57 other counties ( including Susquehanna) would need to reassess, according to state data.

I'll discuss possible "standards" in a bit, but first some good tidings. Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille wrote in the majority opinion that regulation is best left to the Legislature. And it seems the Legislature is not inclined to force reassessments on almost all counties in the current economic climate. So, we may be saved by political inertia; unless the courts decide to extend the reassessment ruling to all counties.

What statewide standard might be used to judge the accuracy ( or fairness) of assessments? The proposal seems to be to require the county Coefficient of Dispersion (COD) to be less than 20 or preferably less than 15. That standard makes most counties in need of reassessment.

The COD is a measure of the degree of nonuniformity in the ratio of assessed value to market value of properties within a jurisdiction. It is calculated as the average deviation of a group of numbers from the median expressed as a percentage of the median. The smaller the COD, the closer all assessment ratios are to the median value and the "fairer" the assessment process.

At least, that would be the case if market value could be determined accurately for properties. In fact, it is much harder to determine market value in rural areas with lots of high acreage parcels and low turnover than in cities with more uniform properties and high sales turnover.

At any rate, regardless of the accuracy, the state has a data table of each counties COD, at this website :http://www.steb.state.pa.us/Assessmain.asp?OptionCounty=ALLOptionChoice=Disp.

The table lists Huntingdon County at the highest COD of 51.8; and Cumberland County at the lowest COD of 13.1. The mid-point in this range, and also the median, is 32.5 - by definition, half the counties have CODs higher than the median and half have lower CODs. Susquehanna County is right at the median with a COD of 32.5. The five northern tier counties average COD is 31.3.

Allegheny County has a COD of 30.3 and the state Supreme court ruled that it must reassess - but remember that it is a relatively high density county with relatively uniform properties and high sales turnover. That is a very different case from the rural counties and the court's reasoning, being specific to Allegheny County, may not apply more broadly.

As to a statewide COD standard, that seems to be only a judicial suggestion without much legislative interest. Let's hope it stays that way.

Thinking about School Funding

This Susquehanna Independent article - Montrose school district enters into gas lease got me thinking about school funding and state aid as well as gas revenues. Probably related to dread of the upcoming August school property tax bill.

The bottom line is the Montrose Area School District will get a 3.3% one time funding increase this year from the gas lease and the federal stimulus, resulting in no property tax increase. Hopefully, some of those funds are being retained to keep taxes down next year. The State allocation of discretionary funds (e.g. Stimulus) does not seem fair to Susquehanna County. Read on for the details.

Montrose Area SD will get $2400/acre for a seven year gas lease on 90 acres; that's a one-time payment of $216,000. Sounds big, but it's less than 1% of the district's $25.2 million 2009-2010 budget. Or, at 3078 taxpayers, think of it as $67 per taxpayer.

The article also states that "3,078 taxpayers had been approved to get a homestead exemption and would realize a tax savings of an average of $361 each, down about $40 each from last year, when fewer persons qualified." You can find the exemption reduction numbers for counties here (pdf Object) as released by the PA Department of Education, showing a total of $613,200,000 in state-funded tax relief with $1,o98,584 going to Montrose Area SD.

In addition, the Federal Stimulus bill provided $720,163,740 to PA for it's school districts. This data table ( PA School District Aid Under SB 850) shows that the stimulus bill allocation to school districts averaged an 11.7% gain over the regular state SB850 funding, which was held constant for the 2009-10 school year. So, Montrose Area SD got another one-time plus up of $610,200.

Susquehanna County districts got stimulus plus-ups ranging between 5.4% and 8.5% ( average 6.9%), with Montrose getting a 7.3% gain. Basically, the stimulus allowed the state to increase school funding without increasing the state education budget. Even so, Susquehanna County's share was well below the state average of 11.7%. So where did the Federal stimulus funds go?

They are spread out quite a bit, but Lancaster County did well and Philadelphia County got a 20.1% increase or $212,594,400 over it's SB850 funds. Philadelphia's % gain is not the biggest, but it's $ gain is by far the biggest. Philadelphia got about 30% of the total stimulus funds. Of course, it is a very large school district and gets about 17% of the usual state (SB850) funds. Still. it managed to get proportionally almost double its fair share and about 3 times as big a % gain as Susquehanna County.

Doing a little math on these numbers is interesting.

First, the average Montrose Area SD taxpayer did well this year - gaining $198 from stimulus funds and $67 from gas leasing while losing $40 from homestead/farmstead reductions for a net gain of $225. Of course, those gas and stimulus funds won't be there next year. So, we won't get a tax increase this year; but no reduction is planned either. Maybe, some of the extra funds are being retained for tax savings next year. I hope so, they add up to 3.3% of the district's budget this year. I'd hate to have a "balanced" budget this year followed by a 3-4% tax hike next year.

Next, looking at the available state aid funds, we see that Montrose Area SD got about 1.8% of the state homestead/farmstead exemption funds, 1.4% of the state SB850 funds, and 0.9% of the federal stimulus funds. I can't explain why these ratios are so different.

I wonder if it could be related to the amount of political discretion the State Administration has in allocating the funds? The exemption funds are set by formula in the legislation; the stimulus funds are very discretionary. Just another thought.