The Centre County Board of Commissioners has scheduled a series of town hall meetings to focus on a possible $5 vehicle registration fee increase.
On March 7, Chairman Commissioner Michael Pipe announced the town hall meetings will be held Tuesday, March 14, at 6:30 p.m. on the third floor of the Courthouse Annex building, Bellefonte; Wednesday, March 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the Patton Township Municipal Building, and Monday, March 20, at 6:30 p.m. at the YMCA in Philipsburg.
According to Pipe, the idea of the town hall meetings is to get people and communities more familiar with the measure.
Pipe said increasing the cost of state vehicle registration by $5 for non-exempt vehicles would increase funding to handle the much-needed road work around the county. The fee would be labeled as a “county fee” and be collected by the state Department of Transportation at the time a vehicle is registered or renewed.
According to Pipe, when the state passed its Act 89 transportation bill in November 2013, a special fund with the state treasury was established called “Local Use Fund.” This allowed municipalities, beginning in 2015, to add the $5 county fee. Fourteen other Pennsylvania counties already collect the fee.
According to Pipe, several letters of interest were sent to Centre County municipalities, and he visited a number of local government meetings to talk about the program. He said he believes the program has “been well received.”
He said the commissioners have received responses to 20 of the 35 letters of interest that were mailed out. Of those, he said about a dozen communities indicated their support in the matter, whereas another six or seven were against it. He said the others responded they would support the measure if the county supported it.
In other business, the commissioners:
■ Welcomed Ken Pendleton as the new director of the Centre County Office of Aging.
■ Approved a contract renewal between the county and the Center for Alternatives in Community Justice for the Pretrial Release Program for eligible defendants currently incarcerated. The contract total is $131,500.
■ Executed a memorandum of understanding for the Final Land Development Plan for Sullivan’s Mini Storage, Phase VII. This proposal constitutes a final plan submission showing the storage buildings as well as corresponding infrastructure to service the proposed land development activity, located off Rolling Ridge Drive within the Penn Eagle Industrial Park in Benner Township.
