Courthouse roof part of Blair County budget session

$1.5 million requested for final phase of ongoing project

HOLLIDAYSBURG -- The Blair County public works manager requested about $1.5 million for phase four of the courthouse roof project during Thursday afternoon's budget session presentations.

"This is the final phase of the roof for the courthouse," Manager Nick Burket told the county commissioners. "This would be the rest of the mansard for the new side, and it would cover all of the towers for the new side."

Burket said the high cost was partly due to the phase needing a lot of "scaffold work" and weight restrictions in the courtyard. Because of those restrictions, if the budget is approved, the contractor will go to the Hollidaysburg Borough and ask "for some type of limited shutdown or a permanent shutdown for Allegheny Street while they're working."

"That front face of the courtyard, the only real solution we could come up with that was, from a safety perspective, going to be viable, was they were going to bring in a crane, have a basket, and pretty much have like, two or three guys working their way across that mansard," Burket said.

The work would be time consuming and therefore expensive, Burket said, but the weight restrictions prohibited the use of scaffolding, which limited their access. The phase four cost Burket listed was $1,537,081.

The county's IT Director Don Weakland also presented his department's budget. One item that stood out to the commissioners was the request for five enterprise licenses for ChatGPT for $1,200.

Weakland said he included the request because other departments expressed their interest in utilizing AI.

"My recommendation to the county is that we get that on an enterprise plan so that the county retains control of whatever they might be putting into the ChatGPT," Weakland said. "Right now, if they're authorized to use it, they're using personal accounts. We would certainly prefer that not to be the case."

Commissioner Laura Burke told Weakland it was her understanding that the Department of Veterans Affairs was one of those departments, which Weakland confirmed. Burke then asked if those five licenses would be for specific people or would be shared and Weakland said they would not be shared but assigned per individual account. He added the Emergency Management Agency and Blair County Prison were also utilizing ChatGPT.

"The EMA looks like they are just looking for a good tool to help them with policies, procedures, that sort of thing," Weakland said. "They do not have access to it today, but they've asked for it."

The prison, Weakland said, was a little scattered on what they would be using it for.

"Veterans Affairs did make a very compelling case, however," Weakland said.

Burke said she had previously spoken with the VA director and that they are utilizing AI to better research benefit eligibility for their clients.

"It helps with wording for the application," Burke said, "to make it more likely they will be approved because they can figure out what has worked with other places."

Weakland told the commissioners that five licenses wasn't a minimum and they could get a single user enterprise license.

"It's a really good utility for Veterans Affairs," Weakland said. "But if we needed a new director for retirement reasons or whatnot, that license would just be applied to the new person and they'd have the historical context that we wouldn't otherwise have."

Weakland said a lot of products use AI, which the county isn't blocking.

"We're only blocking generative (AI), so anything that's going to create something that doesn't exist today is what we're blocking," Weakland said.

Weakland also addressed the $40,000 "placeholder" cost listed for the county's website, saying the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania is its current host. The county currently pays $8,000 a year for its website hosting.

"They are out of the website game, so we will begin that project in January," Weakland said. "We put a $40,000 placeholder in there for that; we don't yet have a scope for what will be involved in doing it."

Weakland said he did not want to spend "anywhere near that" but if the website had to go through a redesign and sign up with a new company, it would "probably be a pretty reasonable expense."

"So it's not just that you're paying $40,000 to have a website," Weakland said. "This is the work involved with moving it from CCAP to a new hosting provider."

When Commissioner Amy Webster said they didn't really have a choice regarding the expense, Weakland said they did not, "short of not having a website."

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor-Musselman is at 814-946-7458.