Down River

By John Lipez

By the Numbers – Part Two:
5 – The number of railroad crossings Norfolk Southern wants to remove from five streets bisecting Lock Haven’s downtown.

That’s an interesting development the railroad behemoth shared with City Hall just recently, especially since Norfolk Southern only a couple years ago sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars in installing fancy new crossing lights and gates at those same five crossings.

But now the railroad wants the crossings removed, offering the city an “incentive payment” to go along with their removal, the incentive amount not publicly announced. City council was to consider the request at its meeting on Monday of this week so look elsewhere in this section on the story on how the City Fathers and Mother responded.

Norfolk Southern noted that three of the crossings are within a thousand feet of the Paul Mack Boulevard elevated crossing over their tracks. They made no reference to sealing off the crossings on Hanna Street, Bald Eagle Street, Bellefonte Avenue and W. Water Street. But removing all the other five would cause some serious traffic congestion at the remaining crossings, would slow access time from city police and the Hope-Hose and Hand-in-Hand Fire Companies on the north side of the tracks in getting to any emergencies on the south side of town and would certainly cause the reworking of the city street-sweeper schedule. One would think businesses along those streets would prefer the full length of those streets be maintained for reasons of customer convenience. (And happy to pass along here, City Council did in fact nix the crossing closure plan on Monday night).

113 – The number of miles from Shickshinny to Farwell. Why bring this up, you ask? That’s how far Northwest Area High School from Shickshinny, PA had to travel to bring its football team to Dwyer Memorial Field last week to post a hard-earned win over the host Bucktail Bucks in a District 4 playoff game.

The trip takes an hour and 57 minutes, according to Google. So that compares favorably with some of the trips the Bucks have to take as part of their far-flung conference alignment. The travails of small schools in rural Pennsylvania finding football opponents.

Down River would be remiss if it failed to give a shout-out to Buck coach Frank Sutliff for the great job he has done and in restoring pride, discipline, and success in the Bucktail program. The Bucks may have lost a heart-breaker last weekend, but they’ve won the hearts of football followers in Clinton County. And Sut’s Sauce is really good, too.

300,400 to 400,000 – The number of daily unaccounted for gallons of water in the Lock Haven water system in recent months. The missing water was touched on last week and of this writing, still has not been found.

So how do you lose 300,000 or 400,000 a day for months and months? Down River posed that question to former Lock Haven City Manager/Engineer Richard Marcinkevage. His response, “No one can say for sure.” He did say that sophisticated equipment is being deployed to try and track the leak. With the city supply at a low ebb and a million dollars being spent to make an emergency hookup to two wells in Wayne Township, it will be in everyone’s best interest if the leak can soon be found and fixed.

3 – The number of candidates for Clinton County Commissioner on the Nov. 7 ballot. Yes, every other commissioner election for years and years and years would see four candidates on the November ballot, but not this year.

As a refresher, here’s why: Incumbent Angela Harding was the only Democrat to express an interest in running for commissioner on the Democratic side. When that became apparent, word surfaced that one of the Republican candidates might attempt a write-in campaign on the Democratic ballot in case he or she didn’t make to the finish line on the GOP side.

When that word got out, Joan Heller, a longtime Democratic Party supporter, offered to run her own write-in campaign in an effort to join Harding and become the second successful Democrat in that party’s primary.

Heller easily made the spring cut to secure the Democrats’ second nomination and then some months later quietly withdrew her candidacy leaving voters this week to choose from among three candidates for commissioner, assuring that Democrat Harding and Republicans Jeff Snyder and Jim Russo would win election on Tuesday.

The Heller gambit on behalf of her party denied the Republicans of a chance to get three GOP-ers on what could have been a four-way November ballot.