A resolution allowing the city of Williamsport to seek an appraisal firm for various transit properties has been approved by City Council.

Attorney Christopher Kenyon recently described the resolution as referring to Trade and Transit Centre 1 at 100 W. Third St. and the Church Street parking garage, 11 Church St., to council.

“These are surplus properties no longer used for transit purposes,” Kenyon said.

Meanwhile, the city has been dealing with property transfers with River Valley Transit Authority (RVTA) on properties that had been used for transit purposes. And there were federal transit dollars that went into them, Kenyon explained.

In conversations with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the city has learned that it can sell some of these surplus properties, he said.

“These two particular properties are clearly not used for transit purposes,” Kenyan said. “They were properties used with grant funds that were an 80/20 match.”

“It was 80% federal transit funds and 20% match by the city,” he said. “So if you sell those properties, 80% of those funds will go back to the FTA and 20% would go back into the city budget, the general fund,” Kenyon said.

To initiate that process, the council had to pass the resolution saying these are no longer being used for transit purposes and are surplus properties. The resolution authorizes an appraiser to put a value on those properties.

That appraised value would then be presented to the FTA for its approval, for a confirmation of what those values of the properties are, which would then allow the city to go out to market to attempt to sell them.

There are other properties that are being used for transit purposes and are not part of the resolution, Kenyon said.

“You still have the opportunity to explore those in conjunction with the partners at the RVTA to see if those properties are going to continue to be used for transit purposes, and if not, to consider this option to also appraise those properties,” he said.

Council President Adam Yoder noted for some context that this is tied to the ongoing separation process of the city with RVTA.

“I think it would be wise to understand what that valuation is, and if it’s a separate process,” Yoder said.

That need to separate was triggered by the investigation into William E. Nichols Jr., the former general manager of the former River Valley Transit and the former city finance director. Because of Nichols overseeing the use of more than $500,000 in transit grants not for transit purposes, the city was required to repay the FTA $1.4 million.

Nichols, who was fired by Mayor Derek Slaughter January 2020, pled guilty May 5 in Dauphin County Court to felony theft by failure to make required disposition of funds and tampering with public records, and was sentenced to a year’s probation.

Nichols never was found by investigators to have benefitted from the grants for personal use, but admitted to shifting around grant funds and misappropriating federal and state transit public funds.