Pennsylvania Fire-Training Site to get $500,000
BELLEFONTE --The county's beleaguered fire-training site expects to receive a major influx of cash, according to one fire official, with state Rep. Mike Hanna, D-Lock Haven, set to deliver a $500,000 check to firefighters this afternoon.
County fire and emergency services training site committee chairman Tim Schreffler said Tuesday that the money will be presented to the firefighters at the Paradise Road site at 5 p.m.
Hanna was in session Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.
The money, drawn from the coffers of the House Democratic caucus, comes after a strong attempt by Hanna to make good on his party's portion of a $2 million bargain offered by Gov. Ed Rendell.
The fire-training site has long sought state funding. A line item was placed in the 2005 capital budget. Rendell, however, chose not to fund the item, choosing instead projects that would drive economic development.
However, Rendell told local lawmakers last fall that if each of three House and Senate caucuses could come up with $500,000, he would throw in the final half-million for a total contribution of $2 million, the amount requested in the budget.
Hanna is the first of the lawmakers representing all or part of Centre County to obtain caucus funding.
News of the donation came as a relief to Schreffler, who has been working nonstop on a number of fronts to secure money for the site.
"This is the shot in the arm we need, based on the financial constraints we're currently facing," Schreffler said.
The committee now has $2.1 million for construction of the fire-training site, with the money coming from Centre County and the Centre Region Council of Governments. It will cost about $5 million to construct all the training equipment desired at the proposed site in Benner Township.
In recent weeks, however, the firefighters have also been offered two additional tracts of land -- 17 acres along Spring Valley Road on the University Area Joint Authority property and 22 acres along nearby Trout Road -- that may significantly reduce development costs.
Schreffler said with this gift and the possibility of sites with lower development costs than the original located at Paradise Road, "What we're looking now is a totality of building this site. The committee is very optimistic."
Still, Schreffler said, with so many good things happening, the executive committee is loathe to move in haste. Every decision made, he said, will be made unanimously and after careful study.
"We don't want to get into a situation where we don't have all the answers," he said.
Commissioner Scott Conklin, who has worked closely with firefighters since the county assumed responsibility for the training site in 2002, called the announcement "good news."
"We could be well on our way to this being the first quarter of that $2 million," Conklin said of Hanna's move. "It's looking as if they may have the cash on hand to put the major components in. Mike said he was going to do it, and he did it."
Distributed by the Associated Press