Tag Archives: Pennsylvania
Posted in Codes & Regulations | Current Events | Politics | Transportation
Last summer and into the fall, we heard about Governor Corbett’s Transportation Funding Advisory Council (TFAC) and their recommendations to fund the necessary transportation improvements in Pennsylvania. You can read my previous post regarding the TFAC here. Well, a foundational part of the TFAC report was approved two weeks ago by the PA Legislature, and on Thursday, July 5th, Governor Corbett signed this legislation into law.
The key bill, House Bill 3, allows public-private partnerships, or P3′s, to be formed where private equity is used to fund transportation improvements in PA. This private investment will fund roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure improvements, instead of using tax-payer dollars. The private investment group then gets a return on their investment through user fees or tolls that they are allowed to levy on the transportation element that is improved. This offers the investor a consistent revenue stream, and gets Pennsylvanians a roadway, bridge, railway or other transportation on a faster time table than can be done with public revenue streams.
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Posted in Codes & Regulations | Municipal Services
With the New Year usually come new laws. Finally, a highly anticipated regulatory revision takes place in 2012, which will likely lower the cost of doing business for many local governments, municipal authorities and school districts. It’s an adjustment of limits for advertisement requirements for bids in Pennsylvania.
Act 84 of 2011, effective January 1, will increase the minimum dollar amount to advertise and seek bids for purchases and contracts from the current threshold of $10,000 to $18,500. In addition to increasing the current bid threshold, Act 84 will makes changes to the minimum amount necessary to seek telephone quotes for purchases and contracts to between $10,000 and $18,500. Any purchase a local government, municipal authority or school district makes that costs less than $10,000 will not be subject to the state’s bidding and advertising requirements. Smartly these minimum bid amounts will be adjusted annually based on changes in the Consumer Price Index. The PA Department of Labor and Industry will issue an annual change to the minimum bid amounts by January 1 of each year.
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Posted in Bridge Design | Current Events | Economic Development | Politics | Transportation
Want a valuable primer on all-things-transportation for Pennsylvania in our current economy? If you haven’t yet heard about Governor Corbett’s Transportation Funding Advisory Council (TFAC), you should. PA is notorious for crumbling infrastructure, including structurally deficient bridges and debilitated roadways. To pursue creative, viable solutions for our transportation woes, Governor Corbett created the TFAC this past spring, to thoroughly investigate and report on a way forward.
The Advisory Council was charged with comprehensively reviewing the movement of goods and people in Pennsylvania, and in August they published a 70 page report of their findings. It’s quite a lesson on our bridges, roadways, public transportation and passenger rail, freight rail, aviation and ports. In the report you learn great facts like these:
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Posted in Alternative Energy | Communities | Current Events | Economic Development | Leadership | Marcellus Shale | Natural Gas | Politics | Transportation
T. Boone Pickens during a roundtable discussion at Williamsport, PA’s Community Arts Center
I’ve met some notable folks. Former Presidents, pro ball players, cultural icons, radicals, and rich people to name a few categories. I found them to be similar to most of the successful folks I know well. Each of these folks admitted to a bit of extra luck in their life. They each could tell a version of “in the right spot at the right time” story.
There was a consistency to these people that I find interesting and admirable. In some form, each was a leader with a relentless commitment to a vision. The vision was built on a series of objectives and that is where most of the luck occurred. But none the less they agreed to take risk, not get scared, and not give up. That is what I admire.
I and about a thousand other people got a dose of leadership at the Community Arts Center on September 30th. Boone Pickens has his “plan”. But that night he spoke of his vision to make our country better, told us the objectives needed to make this change, and what role citizens play in this.
Citizens have to start thinking about energy. Get your family, friends, business, and vendors thinking about energy. How do you use it? Where does it come from? Who do you give your energy money to? How can you use less energy? If you don’t want to use less energy, what sources of energy will you embrace? Wind, solar, natural gas, coal, nuclear sources are the portfolio. What is your choice? Hard to choose if you don’t give it some thought.
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Posted in Communities | Current Events | Employees | Leadership | Stewardship | Transportation
The Bloomsburg Fair in Columbia County was cancelled for the first time in 157 years due to flooding the fairgrounds recently received.
The rains from September 5th through the 8th, as the remnants of tropical storm Lee crossed the eastern seaboard, brought the fifth worst flood in Susquehanna Valley history. Destruction and loss of life followed in the wake of the flooding, as residents, businesses, and officials from PA and the federal government continue to assess the damage.
As of four days after the flood waters began receding, here is some of what happened:
4,500 homes, and counting, were damaged or destroyed. > Read the rest of this article
