With more than 20 years of service on Tyrone Borough Council under his belt, council member Jim Beckwith is seeking another term as a representative of Tyrone.
“I have spent about 20 years on council,” said Beckwith. “I enjoy trying to help the community. I want to continue to do so.”
Beckwith not only serves as a council member, but he also serves as the borough fire chief.
Adding jobs in Tyrone is one of the many issues facing the community.
“We need jobs here,” said Beckwith. “We need to get the paper mill open again. We are in the process of looking for another borough manager. We need to find a good borough manager to come in and run the borough.”
With 20 years of service on the council, Beckwith has been part of many decisions that have benefited the Tyrone community.
“Some things you do because they were mandated like redo the reservoirs,” said Beckwith. “We have expanded the sewer plant and added the water treatment plant to make sure the purification of our water is up to the federal mandate. Sometime the federal agencies step in and you don’t have much of a choice. That was the case with the water treatment and we took care of what they wanted.
“It was good to get an agreement with the Northern Blair Regional Sewer Authority to the satisfaction for all sides. The Streetscape project was a good thing for our community. It was done without local funds. If Tyrone doesn’t get it, somebody else would. There were some people who said that the Streetscape money should have been used for Washington Avenue. We looked into grants for getting that project done. The grant money just isn’t available for that now. It is on the list of projects the council is working on.”
The project that Beckwith has championed was the new park equipment for Reservoir Park.
“I have fought for that for years, and we finally got it done,” said Beckwith. “The park is used not only by people of Tyrone, but many from out of town. People come from all over to use it. Upgrading the park was a big step and I was happy for it to take place.”
Beckwith also says that the City Hotel Park is a beautiful addition to Tyrone.
“The old City Hotel was a fire hazard,” said Beckwith. “It was replaced with a beautiful project that was constructed through donations. I fought to try to make sure that no borough money was used to get the project accomplished. In the end, we used some borough money, but very little.”
The council faces two upcoming tasks… the hiring of a new borough manager and the finalization of a new police contract.
“We have requirements with education and experience for the job,” said Beckwith. “We are probably going to use the same requirements we used when we hired Al (Drayovitch). We lucked out and got a good guy with 20 years experience when we hired Al. We hope we can find someone as good to come in and take the reigns.
“I can’t say how close we are on the police contract, but I hope it is close,” said Beckwith. “The contract will be very beneficial to the community if it is signed.”
Beckwith says that he is running for council because he enjoys serving the community and has no personal agendas.
“There are two things that can be discussed in executive sessions they are personnel and legal matters,” said Beckwith. “I can assure you and the people of Tyrone that I have never sat in on a meeting that violated the Sunshine Act. If we did such a thing, we can be held liable. Why would we take that chance? We have had a lot of executive sessions recently. We also have been in contract negotiations with both unions. There are a lot of discussions to get a contract done. You never get a contract done in one meeting. We have been negotiating not one but two contracts.
“We have had several executive sessions on personnel matters and we aren’t allowed to give that information out,” Beckwith continued. “There are legal matters that can’t be made public. There are people involved and we can’t mention their names because we would be in violation of the privacy act.”
Beckwith responded to Bill Fink’s charge that council meetings are decided before they happen.
“We get a workbook the Friday before the work session,” said Beckwith. “We have Saturday and Sunday to go over the bills we have to pay and some of the other things that are on the agenda. I have asked many questions in the meetings. I’d like to know what we are supposed to be hiding.”
Beckwith will be on the Republican ballot in the May primary.
