April is a special month for me as a writer for Webb Weekly. It was in April of 2014 that I wrote my first article, a LION (Leader in our Neighborhood), on Kathy Fenstamaker, a mother who hosted headbanger bands for young people. For the next two years, I wrote over 80 columns on all sorts of people who were doing extraordinary things and received little to no recognition for it.

The cover story for Webb Weekly on April 20, 2016, was on the Pennsylvania Presidential Primary, which was scheduled for the following week. On page 12 of that issue, a new column was introduced to Webb Weekly. The heading was “Welcome to County Hall Corner.” This week marks the seven-year anniversary of that first column.

Truth be told, I was very reluctant to do this weekly feature. I liked writing the LION articles, and it seemed they had been well received. However, my publisher, Jim Webb, had been pushing me to start another column centered around local government. He first suggested school boards, but with eleven school districts to cover, that seemed like a herculean task. Jim then suggested covering local municipality meetings. I had been a township supervisor for several years at that time and knew that many meetings were quite mundane, not to mention the volume involved with covering the city of Williamsport, the nine boroughs, and forty-two townships in Lycoming County.

But Jim Webb was not a man who gave up easily, so he called in early April of 2016 and suggested following the county government. Now this idea did stir my interest. I had not done my research, but I was fairly certain the current commissioner board had to be one of the least experienced in Lycoming County history. Jack McKernan and Rick Mirabito had just taken office three months before, and Tony Mussare was the “veteran” commissioner serving in his second term.

I had no idea what to expect when I attended my first Lycoming County Commissioners’ work session on Tuesday, April 12th, 2016. About a dozen people were in the Conference Room in the Executive Plaza Building, with the three commissioners sitting at the opposite end of the room at a long table. They did this to make a more informal atmosphere. Tuesday work sessions were solely for discussion; the actual decisions would be made in the official public meeting on Thursdays.

Commissioner McKernan was the chairman and was going through the agenda point by point as some required clarification, and other items were rather rudimentary. Yet I was engaged by the whole thing. It covered a wide range of topics, from a discussion of extending the river walk to how the liquid fuels tax funds could be used more effectively. From then on, I became a fixture at these weekly meetings, although the COVID-19 shutdowns resulted in dismissing the work sessions in 2020.

Over these seven years, I have written 340 County Hall Corner articles, and in some ways, I believe I have barely scratched the surface of Lycoming County’s government operations. The four supervisors over those years, Jack McKernan, Tony Mussare, Rick Mirabito, and Scott Metzger, have all been dedicated public servants. They have had to wrestle with very difficult problems and often disagreed on the issues and even the process, but in most cases were able to work together and find acceptable solutions.

There are still roadblocks, such as the coroner’s need for a working headquarters. Still, they have also shown very creative solutions, such as the one for employee health care, which resulted in the new Partnership Health Center for employees and their families. Being on the ground floor of these initiatives and watching the ins and outs helps to appreciate their importance and the effort it takes to make them come to fruition.

I emphasize that I am not a reporter. The Sun-Gazette’s news reporter Pat Crossley does this exceptionally well. I am a feature writer, one who highlights certain stories and also provides background information to help provide perspective for the everyday reader.

And this is why Webb Weekly is not just a weekly advertising paper but also a valuable tool of information for a wide swath of activities in our county, including county government. I used a quote in that first article back in April of 2016 that inspired me and still does. I wrote, “Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.’” Thanks to all who have been my regular readers!