Carbon Commissioners: Bureaucracy hindering fire training center

Money is flowing in for a planned Carbon County fire training center, but state bureaucracy is damming up the progress.

County commissioners on Thursday applied for an additional $1,626,138 Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant for the project.

But they are still awaiting a stormwater permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection to be able to build an access road.

They first applied for the permit a year ago, but had to resubmit it after DEP failed to act. Commissioners are worried the grants will expire before they can get the work done.

“We applied, and then you have to wait so long to get an answer. Then they had to set up a meeting; we had some issues that were addressed. Then we had to set up a meeting because there were more questions of our engineer. It took three weeks to get the meeting, then we waited three weeks to get an answer, and then, ‘oops, you’re out of time,’ and we had to start all over,” said Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne E. Nothstein.

Commissioners had to “resubmit all the applications, advertise in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, pay those fees all over again. It’s getting to the point where we’re going to be out of time again,” he said.

“These grants have deadlines. We have to start spending this funding,” Nothstein said.

He vowed to go directly to Gov. Tom Wolf if the matter isn’t resolved by next week.

Nothstein’s fellow commissioners are equally frustrated.

“We applied to the state for these monies, and they agree with us on the project, basically by awarding us grants and tell us they like the idea. And then one of their agencies stops us or slows us down from proceeding on it,” said Commissioner William J. O’Gurek.

“The bureaucracy is nuts. We have the blessing of the governor, who awards us grants, and then one of his agencies doesn’t follow through,” he said.

“It’s almost like they give you this money and say, ‘we’ll get it back anyway because our agencies just won’t permit it.’ It’s just crazy,” O’Gurek said.

Commissioner Thomas J. Gerhard expressed frustration with the bureaucratic hurdles needed to build an equipment shed.

“All the hoops we have to jump through, we can’t even put a damn pole building up,” Gerhard said.

“They just make it more difficult. It gets very, very frustrating,” he said.

The total anticipated cost of the facility, to be built on the Broad Mountain next to the county Emergency Management Agency building in Nesquehoning, is about $10 million.

So far, the county has gotten $250,000 from a previous RACP grant and $525,000 in local share revenue, among other sources.

The county has secured over $600,000 for the widening of Emergency Lane but has yet to break ground because of the DEP permitting process.