I recently moved back to western Pennsylvania and decided to
try and become more active in civic affairs. To that end I attended my first local commissioners meeting as a member of the general public. The first shock was that I was the only “public” there! Two others did come in, but didn’t stay long. There was no one from the local newspapers there either to report on the proceedings.

The business was rather routine and the commissioners struck me as competent, mostly no nonsense and focused on business at hand. As meetings go, it was pretty crisp and well-run.

What did jump out at me was the crying need to coordinate and consolidate services and purchasing. One big discussion was over hiring a code enforcement officer. There was little to no interest in the position although the job will be advertised. There was talk about sharing a code enforcement officer with a neighboring community, but that wasn’t viable. I thought to myself, why not have something at the county level perhaps like the CLIP program in Philadelphia? Of course that might adopting a single standard code, but it would be better in the long run, IMO.

I’m increasingly convinced local governments are necessary for some things, but should go the way of the dinosaur for
major services like schools, police, fire, highways and civil service hiring.