Lycoming County commissioners add part-time position to sheriff’s department due to increased workload

The number of Protection from Abuse (PFA) orders issued in the county has tripled from 200 in 2010 to 653 in 2023, according to Lycoming County Sheriff Mark Lusk.

Speaking at the Lycoming County commissioners' weekly meeting, Lusk shared statistics to illustrate the jump in the volume of work in his office as the salary board considered increasing his staff.

"With January, we're running on a mark to approach 800 this year. We don't see an end in sight," Lusk told the commissioners.

"The courts assign our judges to hear those every day now. They're actually scheduling the whole week because of the volume that is coming in. At the end of the day on a typical Friday, for instance, we're getting 10 or 12 a day," he said.

Some PFAs are received from other counties and, Lusk noted, the county is also sending more to other counties.

"We're sending more to the Philadelphia area and other parts of the state and we're getting a lot more from out of the county into the county to serve," he said.

"The totality of that just makes it very, very, very busy," he added.

The number of warrants coming to his office has also increased. They come from the county's trial judges and Magisterial District Judges, sometimes averaging as many as 40 warrants a day, he explained. The sheriff's department is then tasked with serving those warrants to the appropriate people.

The salary board approved adding a part-time clerk to Lusk's staff to help in handling the paperwork generated by the volume of warrants.

In other business, under personnel, the commissioners approved hiring the following full-time replacements: Angelique Walters, clerk III in the Assessment Office, $15.45 per hour; Alaynah Grimes and Maelynne Johnson, licensed practical nurses at the prison, $30 per hour each; Alyssa George, correctional officer I at the prison, $20 per hour; Jason Leavenworth, transfer station truck driver in Resource Management Services, $20.16 per hour; Tatyana Turner, senior human resources generalist in Human Resources, $20.40 per hour; and Karen Stopper, senior benefits specialist in Human Resources, $25.18 per hour.

Part-time replacements hired include: Melanie Smith, assistant county detective in the District Attorney's office, $33.11 per hour, and Ruth Kauffman, resident supervisor I at the Pre-Release Center, $18.64 per hour.

Action items approved by the commissioners include: an agreement with Forensic Pathology Associates to perform the county's autopsies and blood toxicology panels; a subrecipient monitoring agreement with American Rivers for $18,750 in 2020 flood mitigation assistance funds; an amendment to a subrecipient agreement with Jersey Shore Borough for an extension on the inclusive playground project; the purchase of AC drives from Schaedler Yesco Distribution in the amount of $12,374; and a resolution designating the Lycoming County Clerk of Courts as the department to collect and disburse court ordered restitution, fees, costs, fines and penalties, a function that had been done by Central Collection, which no longer exists.

The next meeting will be at 10 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 8, at the Commissioners' Board Room, first floor Executive Plaza, 330 Pine St.