Latest news with #TheMeadvilleTribune
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Memorial Day observances in area
Here is a listing of public Memorial Day observances as reported to The Meadville Tribune: • The Kiwanis Club of Conneaut Lake will hold an observance Monday at 10 a.m. at Memorial Park. Invocation and benediction will be given by Bruce Davis of Norrisville Community Church. Speaker will be retired Brigadier General Patricia Genung, Amy Detelich will sing the national anthem, and Jordan Vaughn will play 'Taps.' American Legion Post No. 587 will present the colors. The event can be viewed on the Conneaut Lake Historical Society Facebook page. • Richmond Township will hold an observance Monday at 10 a.m. at the Township Recreation Building, 30031 Route 408. The observance will include a roll call of township veterans and active servicemen and servicewomen. Patriotic music will be provided by Shawn Amy, pastoral duties will be performed by Pastor Harry Zurasky, and master of ceremonies will be Ray Crocker. Guest speaker will be Staff Sgt. Jonathan Campbell. • The city of Meadville's Memorial Day events are set to begin Monday with a 10 a.m. parade. The observance begins at 11 in Diamond Park and continues until noon when Meadville-area churches traditionally toll their bells. Portions of parade streets will close around 9:30 and reopen shortly after the parade. Diamond Park itself will be closed to traffic from around 9 until noon. • Cochranton's Memorial Day observance will take place Monday at 10 a.m. in Cochranton Cemetery. Organizers said there will not be a parade. The ceremony is under the direction of Cochranton American Legion Post 836. The traditional program will include music provided by the Cochranton High School band and the Women's Club of Cochranton. Patriotic readings will be presented by Cochranton students. The Legion will conduct military honors including presentation of the colors, remarks, a final roll call, and a memorial wreath presentation. In the case of inclement weather, the program will be held in the Cochranton High School gym. • Conneautville American Legion Post 615 will hold its annual Memorial Day tribute with a rifle salute and playing of Taps at area cemeteries: Conneautville Cemetery at 9 a.m.; St. Peter's Cemetery at 9:30; Beaver Center Cemetery at 9:45; East Springs Cemetery at 10:15; Rundletown Cemetery at 10:30; and Springboro Cemetery at 11.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Memorial Day observances planned in Crawford County
Here is a listing of public Memorial Day observances as reported to The Meadville Tribune: If your community is holding an observance, email tribune@ for inclusion in a future publication. • The Kiwanis Club of Conneaut Lake will hold an observance Monday at 10 a.m. at Memorial Park. Invocation and benediction will be given by Bruce Davis of Norrisville Community Church. Speaker will be retired Brigadier General Patricia Genung, Amy Detelich will sing the national anthem, and Jordan Vaughn will play 'Taps.' American Legion Post No. 587 will present the colors. The event can be viewed on the Conneaut Lake Historical Society Facebook page. • Richmond Township will hold an observance Monday at 10 a.m. at the Township Recreation Building, 30031 Route 408. The observance will include a roll call of township veterans and active servicemen and servicewomen. Patriotic music will be provided by Shawn Amy, pastoral duties will be performed by Pastor Harry Zurasky, and master of ceremonies will be Ray Crocker. Guest speaker will be Staff Sgt. Jonathan Campbell. • The city of Meadville's Memorial Day events are set to begin Monday with a 10 a.m. parade. The observance begins at 11 in Diamond Park and continues until noon when Meadville-area churches traditionally toll their bells. Portions of parade streets will close around 9:30 and reopen shortly after the parade. Diamond Park itself will be closed to traffic from around 9 until noon.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kiser apparent GOP nominee for county treasurer
Out of the two women seeking the Crawford County treasurer position, the numbers were in Renee Kiser's favor as of Tuesday night's unofficial vote count. Kiser will go against Stephanie Martin in the fall for the seat which is held by Christine Krzysiak. Krzysiak, a Republican, is retiring after first being elected to the position in 2011. Based on the unofficial results, Kiser brought in 4,109 votes compared to opponent Sarah E. Medvec's 3,185. Leading up to the election, Kiser was pounding the pavement and reaching as many voters as she could, telling The Meadville Tribune on Tuesday night that she only had three hours of sleep in the past 30 hours. Still, she was excited for what's to come. 'I think I worked very hard. I went to a lot of events. I think my experience and my education spoke to voters and I'm extremely thrilled,' she said. 'I'm going to work very hard for the people of Crawford County, and I look forward to the November race.' Kiser is a lifelong Crawford County resident and currently calls Saegertown home. She is a graduate of Meadville Area Senior High and earned her bachelor's degree in business education at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. She has 20 years of banking experience and worked in the county's treasurer's office for nine years before being elected as county auditor in 2024. She is currently the secretary for the Crawford County Republican Women. Her opponent come November, Martin, moved to Meadville in 2005 and worked at Allegheny College for 18 years as a mathematics professor. She ran the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program from 2012 to 2022 when she left the college to pursue a position with the HOPE initiative. The treasurer position manages the county's finances, overseeing the collection of local taxes, and advising county officials of investments while providing regular financial reports. Official results will be certified once all provisional ballots and other ballots that must be counted by hand are completed. The final computations, after a five-day posting period in which there are no objections or challenges, will be made official with the final signing by the Crawford County Board of Elections.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Housing Authority faces uncertain staffing, finance questions
A Meadville Housing Authority meeting this week highlighted a staff running at approximately 50 percent capacity and financial disarray beginning to set in four weeks after board members placed the agency's executive director on temporary paid leave. While significant progress is continuing on a multimillion-dollar renovation of Holland Towers, the Wednesday board meeting left it unclear whether approximately $167,000 in upcoming bills for the project would be paid in a timely fashion. 'There are going to be consequences coming from the inability to do anything in terms of the renovation project, so you need to be aware that's coming,' acting Executive Director Jon Ketcham told board members during the meeting. The board's decision to place Vanessa Rockovich, Ketcham's predecessor in the executive director position, on leave left him without access to the capital accounts being used to fund the renovation and spreadsheets tracking the spending, he told board members. Looking to papers arranged on the table in front of him, Ketcham added, 'I do have the change orders here. I have the pay requests here, but I'm not signing them.' Ketcham said he couldn't be sure which accounts to draw funds from without access to the accounts. When board member Marcia Yohe asked later in the meeting if the authority has the money to pay the bills, he said he didn't know. 'I haven't seen the spreadsheet,' he said. 'I can't answer that.' Bills for the project were paid appropriately in early April, Ketcham noted, but 'some of the amounts — the documentation I needed and requested from Vanessa on April 16th, there were some variances, there were some things that were missing and I couldn't account for the full amount that was drawn down or the allocation of it and I've never been given that. 'She has told me that that is not available to me,' Ketcham said regarding an extensive spreadsheet Rockovich maintained tracking the federal grant funding for the Holland Towers project and how it was being spent. 'I was told that I would not understand it.' Ketcham told board members that he also couldn't access other authority spreadsheets, including one for figuring Section 8 payments. 'She has password-protected all those, locking me out,' he said. Still unable to access the files Thursday, Ketcham told The Meadville Tribune that the authority's lawyer would attempt to work out a resolution with Rockovich's lawyer. At the Wednesday board meeting, Christopher Ferry, the authority's attorney, acknowledged the urgency of the situation but also sought to add additional context to Ketcham's report on the difficulties encountered with the capital funds that are being used to pay for the $6.2 million renovation project at Holland Towers. 'I would want to make it clear, nobody's making any allegations here. We don't know enough to be able to say somebody's intentionally doing this or that,' Ferry said. 'There may be innocuous explanations for why he doesn't have access to it right now, so we want to sort that out initially before we make any allegations about anything.' Contacted by phone Thursday, Rockovich did not respond directly to Ketcham's comments. Instead, she expressed concern that commenting on the meeting could add to what she described as 'a lot of misconception.' Rockovich then said she has been in frequent communication with Ferry since being placed on leave. 'I have had numerous conversations with the solicitor on several matters and have asked him to make Jon aware that I was very willing to help with things,' she said, 'and I have never received a request.' Ultimately, board members did not vote on whether to approve the two pay requests related to the Holland Towers renovation during their two-hour meeting. When Ketcham asked board members what to do about them, board member Cena Kneubehl requested the board move to executive session to discuss 'a personnel matter.' Executive sessions allow public agencies to discuss in private certain specific topics outlined by Pennsylvania's Sunshine Act. As the approximately 10 audience members departed and the board prepared to move to executive session, Ketcham was asked what the lack of resolution means with regard to the renovation of Holland Towers. 'I don't know,' he said. Board Chair Joe Tompkins was more optimistic immediately following the meeting. 'I'm confident Chris and Jon will get it resolved,' he said. 'Still running severely understaffed' When discussion at the Wednesday meeting turned to staffing at the agency that operates nearly 350 units of low-income housing and manages more than 180 units of Section 8 housing, Ketcham first looked back to September. At that point, the authority had a full complement of employees with 10 administrative staff members and eight maintenance workers. Today, the staff is down to six administrative and four maintenance employees and some existing employees might be considering leaving, Ketcham told the board. The losses to the maintenance staff included an employee who was licensed as a pesticide applicator. Ketcham said a remaining staff member would test for his license in mid-June. There is some cause for optimism on the staffing front: Two former members of the authority's administrative staff, both of whom retired last fall, were hired on a per diem basis after the board held another special meeting earlier this month. A new Section 8 coordinator is expected to start next week, filling a vacancy of approximately six months, and Ketcham has plans to meet with a potential addition to the maintenance staff. 'But,' he added, 'we are still running severely understaffed right now.' The three most recent appointees to the five-member board, who in recent months have pushed for action on a variety of longstanding issues facing the authority, continued their efforts to develop a formal housekeeping policy and pest management plan as well as to address a backlog of Section 8 applications that has topped 800. Ketcham presented draft versions of the housekeeping policy and the pest management plan, both of which were added to the authority's website, on Thursday for a 30-day period of public comment. Progress on the pest management policy in particular brought a positive reaction from Tompkins. The board was directed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funds and oversees the authority, to develop the policy in August 2023. 'I'm delighted we have a plan in front of us,' said Tompkins, who joined the board in November. 'As long as I've been on the board, we've consistently been told that it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, but it never came.' News on the actual pest treatment front at first appeared positive as well, but Assistant Maintenance Inspector Kyle Lynch was quick to temper the optimism. Lynch reported that nine units at Holland Towers were currently being treated for pests, two for bedbugs and seven for cockroaches. For a building that has struggled to bring down active infestations, particularly bedbugs, for more than three years, the figures at first seemed a significant step forward. But Lynch said recently completed quarterly inspections were likely to reveal additional infestations. 'There will be more, I'm sure,' Lynch said of bedbug problems. 'I don't think it's going to skyrocket more than the roaches, though.' Ketcham similarly tempered optimism regarding staff efforts to address the Section 8 waitlist, which includes years of applicants who have likely moved on to other options. 'Right now we are running literally at half staff. If we could get back up to a full complement or even three-quarters of a full complement, it would be easier to consider,' he said. 'Right now, I think everybody is overwhelmed.'
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Yahoo
One dead, two injured in Blooming Valley head-on crash
BLOOMING VALLEY — A two-vehicle head-on crash shortly before midnight Saturday has claimed the life of a 29-year-old Meadville-area man and injured two other people, according to Pennsylvania State Police at Meadville. The identity of the deceased had not been released as of Sunday pending notification of next of kin. The crash happened around 11:50 p.m. on Route 77 just southwest of its intersection with Route 198 in the borough of Blooming Valley. The deceased was alone driving southwest on Route 77 when the vehicle crossed into the oncoming lane of the route, police said. The vehicle then collided head-on with a vehicle traveling northeast. There were two people in the vehicle that was traveling northeast, police said. Both were taken to Meadville Medical Center for treatment of injuries; their conditions were unknown. Police said the driver of that vehicle was a 52-year-old woman from Conneautville and the passenger was a 57-year-old man from Wattsburg. The other driver was pronounced dead at the scene early Sunday by Crawford County Coroner Eric Coston, who told The Meadville Tribune that the man was not wearing a seat belt and died due to blunt-force trauma. The deceased's remains are in the custody of the Crawford County Coroner's Office pending notification of next of kin. Blooming Valley and Saegertown volunteer fire departments and Meadville Area Ambulance Service assisted state police at the scene.
