Lycoming News

Clinton County issued the following announcement on July 16.

The commissioners' voting session wasn't the biggest news to come out of the Piper Building Thursday morning.

County workers were sent home as they arrived Thursday due to a power outage at the building located along Piper Way in Lock Haven. No other buildings were effected by the outage.

Chairman Miles Kessinger said the power had been out since Wednesday evening at about 5:50 p.m., with the backup generator working to keep the county servers up and running.

However, the generator overheated sometime Thursday morning and shut off, turning off the servers, he said.

Multiple countywide services were affected by the outage, including the CAD (computer aided dispatch) system at the Clinton County Communication Center. Kessinger added that the center could still accept calls, they just had to go back to paper to replace the CAD system.

Jury selection at the Clinton County Courthouse also went back to paper Thursday, he said.

Employees located at the Piper Building were told to work from home Thursday while PP&L were onsite attempting to fix the problem and county employees worked to fix the generator.

Kessinger said crews told county officials Thursday morning they were going to check the transformer near the building. They were told when they tripped the breaker, if they heard a loud bang, it wasn't good.

"They flipped the breaker and it sounded like a shot gun went off, flames shot up and they said 'it's going to be awhile,'" Kessinger said.

According to PP&L's outage map, the cause of the outage was a tripped or blown fuse.

Chief Clerk Jann Meyers told The Express PP&L was able to get power up and running by Thursday afternoon, but the server and air conditioning wasn't working.

"We have the lights, the phones and the computers," Meyers said. "Our maintenance and IT departments are working fervently to get the air conditioning and server back up."

Temperatures in the building reached about 90 degrees so Meyers said county employees could still work from home unless they had work that needed to be completed in the office.

The building was expected to be up and running by this morning.

Due to the power outage, the commissioners meeting was held outside at the county's pavilion and couldn't be livestreamed.

During the meeting the commissioners:

- Heard from Meyers who said Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law Act 64 which would amend the Sunshine Act and require governmental bodies such as Clinton County to post agendas for public meetings 24 hours in advance. Meyers said staff have already been doing so and noted that there are ways items can be added within the 24 hour period if necessary.

- Approved a supplement agreement with Norfolk Southern for additional flagging services in connection with the rail trail bridge project at a cost of $50,488. Kessinger voted against the agreement, noting his displeasure with Norfolk. "They're probably one of the hardest organizations to work" and communicate with, he said.

- Approved the resignation of Paul Ryan as public defender effective Aug. 6. Ryan worked as a public defender in the Clinton County Courts for nearly 30 years. Kessinger said Ryan will be missed and the county begin advertising to fill his position.

- Approved a retainer agreement with Court Consultation Services for mitigation services in the public defenders' office at an hourly rate of $125 per hour, plus expenses.

- Approved a one-year renewal with Solarwinds for network monitoring services for $4,343.

- Approved a Child Welfare Information System sharing agreement between the county and PA Department of Human Services beginning Oct. 1, 2021 through Sept. 30, 2022.

- Approved a sales agreement with Miller Brothers Auto Sales to purchase a 2010 Ford Super Duty F-250 truck for the maintenance department at $18,589.

Original source can be found here.