Down River – Nov. 26, 2014

Help in a Season of Thanks:

Yes the holiday season is upon us, Thanksgiving this Thursday, our opportunity to be thankful for the blessings we have.

But this season of thanks is undermined in western Clinton County because of the threat to its primary source of medical care, the Bucktail Medical Center.

Thus far the plight of the medical center does not appear to be receiving the attention it deserves. Make no mistake, the western end of the county, struggling economically for some time now, can ill afford to lose the Bucktail Medical Center.

The county community needs to be aware of the center’s financial distress and needs to encourage leadership from every corner of the county to work to assure the continued viability of this health care provider serving the Renovo area.

The Record earlier this month detailed the BMC plight; the institution’s non-profit board okaying bankruptcy protection in the event creditors try to tap its bank account.

The story said the medical center is facing a debt of some $2.3 million while still able to cover day-to-day operating expenses. It also pointed out center officials are awaiting the payment of a couple significant state and federal reimbursements for services it provides to low income facility users.

Given that, it might be prudent for local leaders to try and put the squeeze on our mid-state elected representatives to try and put the pinch on the applicable agencies to get them to speed up their reimbursements.

State senator Jake Corman and U.S. Representative Glenn Thompson have been drawing headlines for their extensive work in trying to get Joe Paterno’s vacated football wins returned. That’s all well and good (I guess) but it says here their efforts relative to the health care future of western Clinton County should be higher on their “to do” list than rolling around with the NCAA’s Mark Emmert.

If they haven’t done so already, The Record would strongly urge Corman and Thompson, along with state Rep. Mike Hanna and our new state senator Joe Scarnati to collectively come to the aid of the Bucktail Medical Center, using their collective clout to strong arm whatever bureaucrats need strong-armed to get overdue reimbursements to the medical center coffers.

This is an important period of time for the western end of the county. It’s an open secret that something good of some magnitude could be in the Renovo area’s relatively near-term economic future. The community has to be concerned that the loss of the medical center at this juncture could be costly relative to efforts to bring this long-rumored project to fruition.

This is not the time for lenders to move to foreclose on the Bucktail Medical Center; instead it is the time for local community leaders and elected officials to work together to keep the center viable for today, viable for tomorrow. If the BMC goes, the heart of western Clinton County could very well go with it.

We can’t let that happen.

Assessment Answer:

Lock Haven officials, grappling to balance the city’s 2015 budget, were taken aback when they learned the city’s assessed value dropped some $850,000 over the past year.

A municipality’s assessed valuation is part of the process to determine dollars generated through real estate taxes, so a drop of that magnitude would put a dent in the city’s prospective 2015 real estate tax income.

The drop is even more striking given that the assessed value of Clinton County as a whole went up quite a bit over the past year.

So Down River last week went to the county assessment office to run a check on the city numbers.

Chief assessor Keith Yearick said the county assessment is ever evolving and he believed by the time taxes go out in the first part of next year that the city assessed value will have moved back up.

He said the city took a hit when a hill district property owner appealed the assessment on his new holding, now used as a distribution center. The change in use prompted a favorable ruling from the county commissioners in their role as the county assessment hearing board, causing a drop in the concrete block structure’s assessed valuation by a couple hundred thousand dollars.

But Yearick said some city increased valuations will soon be kicking in, including a new bank just off Paul Mack Boulevard and improvements made to the old Penn School, now an apartment complex on Bald Eagle Street.

Six Degrees of Separation – Open Division:

You may or may not be aware of the new “Foxcatcher,” a motion picture starring Steve Carell as the reclusive millionaire John du Pont.

It’s a sinister story about the du Pont heir who housed a training ground for amateur wrestlers at his estate in suburban Philadelphia.

People in the wrestling community know the du Pont tale; it ended in tragedy with his shooting and killing of Olympic champion Dave Schultz in 1996, du Pont later found mentally ill and guilty of third degree murder. He died in 2010 at the Laurel Highlands Correctional Facility near Somerset.

What you may not know is that in the late 1980s du Pont was a financial contributor to and participant in the Lock Haven University fall wrestling classic.

A local wrestling follower said du Pont would helicopter to Lock Haven and travel to Thomas Field House where tournament officials would find him opponents to wrestle in the tourney’s open division. A decade later he shot and killed an Olympic champion.

Check Also
Close
Back to top button