In an ongoing effort to allow county residents to have the complete picture on how their tax dollars are being spent, the Lycoming County Commissioners have decided to be very specific where the monies are coming to pay for items requested on their weekly meeting agenda.

For example, a request for maintenance services from Lecce Electric to provide emergency call outs or any electrical issues at tower sites or the 911 Center, on an as needed basis, was approved. It also was noted that this was a budgeted item through operating expenses, reimbursable to the county through Title I funds.

“I’d like to comment that regarding our agenda…you’ll see we’ve always listed whether it’s a budgeted item or not. What we’ve done now is for transparency reasons,” said Commissioner Scott Metzger.

“What we’ve done is broken down even further to show exactly what part of the budget it’s coming out of. So we have that listed on the agenda. So you’ll see here that this is coming out of operating expenses, and we’ll list that and see go forward, you’ll see the different line items on the budget itself, where the monies are coming from,” Metzger added

“I also appreciate the changes that we’ve made here on the agenda items to show these expenses,” Commissioner Marc Sortman said.

He pointed out that it allows the taxpayers to see that not all of the money to pay for things comes from their property tax dollars.

“There’s all these other things that are being funded by state monies, grant monies, federal grant monies, but a lot of times, our residents and the taxpayers who are paying these bills don’t understand where those funds are coming from,” Sortman said.

“This is excellent that they can see when it says an operating expense, yes, that’s your property tax, when it says a DCNR (Department of Conservation and Natural Resources) grant and Act 13 funds–those are funds that we are so fortunate to have in this county–hat don’t affect us personally as the taxpayer that our property tax value,” he said.

“So I’m just thrilled that this is on here and people can see, okay, we didn’t spend $150,000 today on 6.4 we spent $100,000 worth of Pennsylvania state monies at DCNR, and we spent $50,000 over Act 13,” he added, referring to the commissioners approval of an agreement with Environmental Planning & Design in the amount of $149,930, which was approved budgeted item with $100,000 from a DCNR Grant and the balance County Act 13 funds.

Explaining that Act 13 funds are derived from impact fees imposed on the natural gas industry, Sortman said, “It’s being spent only in areas that are allowed by the state, and it doesn’t come out of your personal property tax that you paid in the county.”

“So those are great things, I think, that we can see here and learn from and continue to educate ourselves and the taxpayers of where this money actually comes from, so they know the transparency of where does their money go,” he added.

In other actions, the board approved:a resolution designating officials to execute documents for pass through grant for Penn College; an amendment to an agreement with Viapath Technologies for communication services for inmates at the prison and at the Pre-Release Center, an approved budgeted item but is not an expense item, but is taken from telephone revenues; a resolution closing out the Community Conservation Partnership Grant Project for the Greater Williamsport Area Greenway Wayfinding plan; and an agreement with Guardian Protection in the amount of $2,735 for installation and $228 yearly for service and inspection for fire protection systems, an approved budget item coming out of operating expenses.

Under personnel, the board approved hiring Garrett Russell, subdivision and land development administrator in the planning and community development department at $43,660 per year.

The next commissioners’ meeting will be at 10 a.m., March 26 at the Commissioners’ Board Room, 3rd floor, Third Street Plaza, 33 West Third St.