Down River

By John Lipez

Shrinking:
Did you see the story on A1 of this edition, that Clinton County is shrinking right before our very eyes? It should come as no surprise, given all the stories about folks fleeing rural America, as reflected in declining public school enrollments and an aging population, a recipe for fewer among us as the decades zip by.

Still it was a little jarring to look at the chart from US census figures over the years to note that since the Census Bureau first did a headcount in Clinton County in 1840, there have been only three of the 19 tabulations that have seen a population loss since then: 1930, a loss of 3.7% percent of our population, 1990 with a 4.5 percent drop in population, and 2020, a drop of 4.6% of those among us.

If it’s any consolation (assuming you are part of those among us who would rather see some level of orderly population growth, as opposed to an orderly regression in our numbers), Clinton County is not alone in losing population. It’s part of a trend all across rural Pennsylvania, a significant exception being neighbor Centre County which saw a 2.7% spike to a total of 158,172 residents.

Since The Record does not employ a staff demographer, I can only surmise why Clinton’s figure dropped. There is the aforementioned decrease in public school students (Keystone Central with half the students it had four or five decades ago). And, yes, our population is aging; just go to your favorite eating or shopping establishment and look around. One would also think the significant drop in enrollment at Lock Haven University the last couple years would be a factor, although I was never entirely clear on how LHU students were included in the census numbers.

Through the last century or so, the numbers have not changed that markedly: 33,555 residents in 1920 to 37,450 in 2020. We just kind of amble along here in Clinton County, more than a few not paying a whole lot of attention, more than a few not doing a whole lot of procreating.

What does this warm-body shrinkage mean? In terms of our elected representatives, their districts are going to get even larger, our political clout smaller. While Clinton County shrunk (shrank?), Pennsylvania as a whole grew by 2.4%. That was not enough to prevent the state’s pending loss of another US congressional seat, the state delegation in Washington about to go from 18 to 17 (Pennsylvania’s clout in the Capitol has been diminishing for some time now).

The growth this past decade came in the southeastern part of the state, including Philadelphia and Montgomery and Chester counties; also in the Harrisburg area, Cumberland County the fastest growing county in the state.

The net result will be more elected representatives from those areas and fewer from the backwoods in much of the center part of the state. This is reapportionment time and look for the 76th state House district and the 25th state Senate district to get geographically larger; the same with the 15th and 12th US House districts. These are all represented by Republicans and all will have even larger areas of ground to cover, likely by next year’s election.

Once the next reapportionment is done, as an example, it will be time for current 25th district state Sen. Cris Dush to check the tread on his tires. His far-flung district presently consists of, in addition, to Clinton, the counties of Cameron, Elk, Jefferson, McKean, Potter and Tioga, plus part of Clearfield County. That’s eight counties in all, and all eight are smaller now than they were ten years ago. That’s not good and redistricting will make Dush’s district even larger: more land to cover, comparable bodies to represent.

The 25th district situation is especially distressing when it comes to representation for Clinton County. It has been noted here before, we have a state senator in Jake Corman just across the county line in the Bellefonte area of Centre County and another in Gene Yaw, just across the county line in the Williamsport area of Lycoming County. But our representative, Sen. Dush lives somewhere out around Brookville. We can only hope whoever reconfigures the 25th in the near future might link Clinton to a senator whose district is closer to home.

With each passing census, as Clinton County shrinks relative to the field, we lose more say in Harrisburg and Washington. There are no indications that trend will be ending any time soon. If you can figure out a way to reverse the trend, to get our young people to stay here, to get outsiders to want to come here, let county officialdom know; otherwise with each passing decade, there will be fewer and fewer of us.

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And a Sidebar:
Did you know that earlier this month, Aug. 5, 1921, to be exact marked the 100th anniversary of the first baseball broadcast? The place was long gone Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, the announcer Harold Arlin, the station KDKA.

We point this out by noting with some level of pride that a representative of the Lipez family has been broadcasting local sports in the Lock Haven area dating back to 1947, just 26 years after the first baseball radio broadcast.

Our older readers will recall it was my father, Harris Lipez, who first took to the sports microphone with the establishment of WBPZ in Lock Haven in 1947. He continued his sports broadcasting into the 1990s and was joined by me at some point in the 1960s. (My first job was a Lock Haven State College – Bloomsburg wrestling match from Bloom’s old Centennial Gymnasium in 1964. My sometimes current broadcast partner, Tom Elling, actually wrestled in that match and ended up in a tie, if I recall correctly).

Add it up, it’s 74 years one of those Lipez boys has been doing local sports broadcasting. The fall broadcast season starts a week from this Friday and this Lipez will be happy to be in a press box in Sunbury broadcasting the season opener for Central Mountain versus Shikellamy.