At last night’s borough meeting, the motion was unanimously approved by all council members for a letter to be sent to the Citizens Fire Company with the request to put a halt on the youth dances held at the Citizens Social Hall every Friday night.
According to the request, if the dances are held after one week of receiving the letter, the borough will pull its funding from the fire company.
The decision came about after Tyrone Police Chief Joe Beachem explained the problems the police department has been having with the youth dances.
“We’ve had several problems with the Citizens Dances down at the Citizens Fire Hall with a lot of juvenile crimes, underage drinking, vandalism, loitering, and fights down there,” Chief Beachem told council members. “I spoke to some members of the fire hall down there by letter about these problems, and they assured me these problems would stop, but the last few weekends we’ve had another assault down there, disorderly conduct situation, and underage drinking. So the problems really haven’t come to a halt down there, and I wanted to bring that to council’s attention.”
After Chief Beachem sent the letter, council member Jim Beckwith said he attended a meeting with members of the Citizens Fire Company to talk about the problems the youth dances were causing. Beckwith said the members of the fire hall wanted another chance to reform the dances and that they thought of some ways to curb the problems.
However, the frequent calls into the Tyrone police department didn’t stop even after Chief Beachem sent the fire company a letter and after Beckwith spoke with them at their meeting.
Council members went on to discuss individual examples of disturbances at the youth dances. According to police reports, one juvenile was so drunk that he had to be taken out of the bathroom by EMS. In another incident, a chaperone of the dance is going to be arrested for disorderly conduct. In yet another incident, a boy had his arm broken in a fight.
“You’re never popular when you say you’re going to take something away from the kids,” said Mayor Pat Stoner. “It’s not a popular thing to do. But people have to understand the seriousness of this. This boy could have died there. He had alcohol poisoning. He was so drunk, and how someone could have been so drunk, and someone in there, an adult, not recognize that is beyond me. These are serious offenses, broken arms, it’s a very serious thing.”
Solicitor Larry Clapper advised members of the council that the borough is able to withhold any funding from the fire company if they do not comply with the council’s wishes.
“You don’t want your funds going to something like that. That’s what it boils down to,” said Clapper.
