Not every municipal governing body encourages representatives of paid or volunteer fire departments serving them to regularly attend governmental meetings. But those units of government, like Antis Township, that do prefer or demand such attendance, by virtue of financial support that they ...
None of the issues being debated in the wake of last month’s Parkland, Fla., school shooting can be judged irrelevant. Some suggestions and calls for action are intensely controversial while some less controversial ones also are on the conversation “plate.” But each — very ...
Some higher education administrators seem to have decided to bring back the ’60s — in a completely unacceptable manner. Veterans of civil rights and anti-war demonstrations during the 1960s may remember one tactic employed against them: parade permits. Public officials who just didn’t ...
The possible departure of Tyrone Borough from the four-member Intermunicipal Relations Committee doesn’t necessarily portend the demise of the governmental council that oversees recycling in those municipalities. But Tyrone’s departure, if it actually comes to pass, would inflict a ...
Altoona would have erred in forgoing a celebration to mark the 150th anniversary of its 1868 incorporation as a city. But this year’s sesquicentennial celebration, besides focusing on the city’s history, also holds possibilities for touting Altoona’s many current assets, with an open ...
Gov. Tom Wolf is optimistic about the prospects of getting the Pennsylvania Lottery back into sound revenue territory — optimism that might be shared by some lawmakers as well. However, the governor’s projections don’t seem to be acknowledging fully the short- and long-term implications ...
Despite reflecting significant improvement, the numbers reported last week by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission related to its annual mid-winter resurvey of households without heat-related electric and natural gas utility service still indicate a serious basis for concern. But most ...
Good intentions remained in play over the past year at Archway Ministries, which has a church at Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue in Altoona. But something terribly wrong was evolving at the same time — something that came to a head on Feb. 9 after city code and fire inspectors gained access ...
Could the mass murder of 17 people, most of them children, at a Florida high school last week have been prevented? We will never know with certainty. What we do know is that someone in the FBI was tipped off months ago that someone named Nikolas Cruz had threatened to “be a professional ...
The killing field that Parkland, Fla.’s, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became Wednesday afternoon has injected new fear into parents, teachers, school officials and communities as a whole. The incident, which claimed 17 students and teachers and left another dozen with wounds, also ...
Parents, no doubt you’ve warned your kids about the dangers of social media. A photo or a thought, launched into cyberspace, can have the force of a SpaceX rocket — and can be even harder to retrieve. That was the lesson learned by Ryan, who on Feb. 3 tweeted a comment from an Associated ...
The Blair County Hazard Mitigation Planning Committee’s name alone should spawn public interest in the work it will be doing in the months ahead. While there are people who regard planning as a “dry,” tedious subject, others recognize the process as a necessity for conditions, ...
Love covers a lot of ground. There is the love between a parent and a child. There’s love for one’s partner, sibling, friend, pet. There is even the very real love a child feels for a favorite stuffed animal. Any parent who has had to wash that stuffed animal or search frantically for ...
Pennsylvania has a Sunshine Law for good reasons. One of them is to avoid questionable situations like the one that has evolved over the past month in Cambria County’s Reade Township. Reade, which has experienced much controversy in the past but seemed headed in the right direction based ...
For a while, there was a basis for cautious optimism that the Pennsylvania House of Representatives was serious about reducing the size of its membership. During the 2015-16 legislative session, the House voted to trim its size, and the lower chamber seemed poised for the required second ...
Bouquets upon bouquets of scarlet roses, heart-shaped powder candy with messages like “Be Mine” and “Soul Mate,” bite-sized chocolates meticulously wrapped in wax paper, dinner-for-two bargain deals — call these couples’ galore or single people’s incessant reminders of their ...
Two crew members were killed early Sunday when an Amtrak passenger train on the wrong track crashed into a line of freight cars. More than 100 people were injured in the accident, which occurred in South Carolina. Rail accidents seem to have become a regular occurrence. Sunday’s was the ...
With Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf having delivered his fourth and final first-term budget proposal, attention shifts to the Legislature, which will alter significantly what the governor has put forth. Specifically, the state chief executive’s attempt at getting $1 billion in additional ...
Pennsylvania Republican legislative leaders and state Budget Secretary Randy Albright said in December that the commonwealth’s deficit problems were resolved with the passage in October of the Fiscal Year 2017-18 revenue package. They said that long-drawn-out preparation exercise, completed ...
Despite not being worthy of much sympathy, the five Pennsylvania death row inmates who are suing prison officials over the issue of solitary confinement have, in that federal court action, made a point that many people don’t dispute. That is that solitary confinement can expose prisoners to ...