Twice this month, Tyrone Borough Council heard from Jennifer Sheets of The EADS Group, an engineering and design firm, regarding updating the municipality’s comprehensive plan, only to come to the conclusion the idea would have to be put on hold.
Now, after it appeared the borough would have to wait to apply for state funds to cover half the cost of the project, officials have found a way to cover Tyrone’s share of the costs. The latest decision allowed the borough to beat an April 15 deadline.
Tyrone’s last comprehensive plan was done in 1974. Most such plans are usually good for about a ten-year period. At its April 4 meeting, council agreed by consensus to have Sheets do some preliminary work and report back to the borough.
Sheets also said an update of the borough’s zoning ordinance might be warranted. The last time it was updated was more than 20 years ago in 1983. She informed council state grant money was available.
Grant money from the state would cover about half of the cost of the plan with the borough having to look at funding the rest of the project through other means. One idea was to use Community Development Block Grant entitlement money to pay for the borough’s share. However, such a move would required requests for proposals to move forward with the plan. The borough faced a deadline yesterday to get its application in to the state for Department of Community Development funding.
Sheets addressed council again on April 11 and it was determined the borough would not have the requests for proposal done by the April 15 deadline. Instead, the borough would have to wait until the next time grant money were available.
However, Tyrone Borough Finance Director Phyllis Garhart was not at Monday’s meeting and was unable to offer input about other sources to cover the local share of funding.
Interim Borough Manager Sharon Dannaway said she subsequently spoke to Garhart about the issue to see if there were other possibilities outside the CDBG money.
Garhart came back to Dannaway and said the borough’s share could be covered by money from planning and zoning since a comprehensive plan is a “planning tool.”
Dannaway said she also contacted council members individually this week to see if it wanted to go forward if borough funds were available.
“I called all the council people and asked them if we should look at using borough money so we don’t miss out on the deadline,” said Dannaway. “The consensus of council was…they felt this was something they wanted to pursue if we had money available through the borough’s financing.”
Dannaway said the borough’s share of the plan would cost $18,900 with the other half of the money coming from the grant. She said the plan will take about 15 months to be completed.
She said The EADS Group would be in charge of doing the project for the borough. The company is an Altoona-based engineering and design firm.
“They go out into the community and assess what we have now, they’ll at what we did have and look toward the future,” said Dannaway.
She said the plan would delve into population growth and decline, the borough’s housing stock, infrastructure and education facilities. Dannaway said their would also be public input to shape the plan.
“Through these meetings with the public and the research they’ll do, they’ll put together this comprehensive plan,” said Dannaway. “(It’s done) to say this has been the past history of the borough from the beginning, this is what’s happened, this where we are at now and according to the census information, this is what we may need to look at in the future to plan for projects.”
