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Democratic commisioners candidates talk priorities at forum

Voters had a chance to see where four Democrats seeking nominations for county commissioners’ seats stand on the issues facing Lycoming County at a forum held this week.

The room was filled at Park Place as Sean Simcox, Denitra Moffett, Victoria Marks and Mark Mussina, who are seeking to represent their party in the May 16 primary, took questions from moderator and Penn College professor Dr. Craig Miller.

There are three positions at stake, and commissioners Rick Mirabito and Tony Mussare have announced they are not seeking re-election.

Mirabito, the lone Democrat, said following the event that he thought it was "impressive that we have four really great candidates running for office."

"Not only are all their hearts in making the county better, but they have the intellectual ability to both to listen and to learn," Mirabito said. "If you listen to what they said tonight, none of us has the answers to all the problems. But, what they understand is that really the ability of a community to grow is based on our ability to listen to people and find out what issues there are and then to explore alternatives for solving. They are all problem solvers."

The candidates were asked a series of questions and were given a time limit to answer.

The first question asked was: What are your top priorities for the county and how do you plan to achieve them?

For Moffett, the decrease in population in the county is a top concern.

"We are losing people in our county -- people moving out, young people leaving. They go to college and never come back. ... We need to bring in jobs that are going to attract young families," she added, noting that they need to be jobs that offer a living wage.

Moffett also cited infrastructure as an area of concern in the county.

Focusing on a declining population was also Simcox's top priority, followed by the mental health crisis facing many county residents.

"This is a challenge that we have not been able to overcome for years, so we need to do whatever we can to partner with other organizations within the community to bring awareness to this," Simcox said.

"I think everybody's impacted by this. Everybody has a family member that struggles. Mental health is a huge issue for this county," he said.

Simcox felt dealing with problems with the county's infrastructure and making sound budget decisions were important for the commissioners

Marks, who has a background as an air traffic controller, brought up the lack of an airport as an example of infrastructure that needs to be addressed.

"We can't bring people in here if they can't even fly here. We have an airport we can't even use," she said.

She also would tap into the potential found in residents in the community.

"We have lots of experts in a lot of different areas. We need to tap into them and make them a part of what we do," she said.

"We shouldn't just be three people out there making the decisions, running the budget," Marks added.

Mussina, a real estate agent, said that the county needs to improve housing wherever possible.

"It's really expensive to build right now, but we have to be able to figure out ways to refurbish and to make the buildings that are here, better," he said.

As far as the lack of jobs, Mussina said the problem is finding people to fill the jobs that are here.

"It's an interesting time in history because usually we say we need to create jobs, but we've seen that we didn't need to create jobs, we needed to fill jobs. When we talked to employers, they couldn't find employees. So, those are difficult problems to answer," Mussina said.

"One of the things that I think we need to stress is taking care of the people that are already here," Mussina said.

He also stressed mental health as an issue to be addressed citing the problem with social media.

"We need to be way more diligent and aggressive with this or we're going to have problems down the road," he said.