Thursday, March 28, 2024

State College Borough Manager Tom Fountaine on Managing in Challenging Times

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The chief executive officer for the Borough of State College since November 2003, borough Manager Tom Fountaine credits his hardworking staff for stepping up and doubling down on the work they do for the community.

Born in Bedford, Indiana, Fountaine graduated from Indiana University in January 1982 with a degree in public administration. His work in city management brought him to Pennsylvania in 1985, and eventually to State College in 2003. He currently serves on the board of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, and he has also been active with the United Way of Centre County. 

Town&Gown founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith interviewed Fountaine via Zoom to discuss the report of the task force on mental health crisis services in Centre County, the increase in the construction of student housing in State College, and the overall state of businesses in the borough impacted by the pandemic.

Mimi: I thought there would be no better person to speak with about everything that’s going on in State College these days than you. What a tough job you have, even more so than usual. Tell me what time you get to the office and what time you usually go home.

Tom: I get in around 8 in the morning, and I am usually here till 7-ish in the evening on workdays, and then some weekends as well. Not that long on weekends, but it’s been a busy year; a lot of hectic activity.

Mimi: Among the immediate pressing issues in State College is the loss of Osaze Osagie and the work the borough’s trying to do to make amends for that happening and prepare for a more successful future. Could you give us an idea of how that’s going?

Tom: We have had several things that we have been working on for quite a while. After the officer-involved shooting in the death of Osaze [in March 2019], the borough, along with the county commissioners, asked a group of residents to be part of a task force on mental health crisis services in Centre County. That task force has had some challenges of its own; the original chair of the task force, Billie Willets, passed away unexpectedly, about a year ago now. And earlier [in 2020], Patricia Best was appointed to take over as chair of that task force.

With COVID-19, the task force had to regroup yet again and figure out how to manage its work in a virtual environment. And so, they have now completed their work and issued a report to the commissioners and the council. Both the Borough Council and the county commissioners have started the review of the report and the task force recommendations. They will continue to work on the implementation of the recommendations.

It was a fairly extensive report; the task force and Dr. Best did a remarkable job concluding their work. And they’ve offered some excellent recommendations for us locally to move forward, and perhaps some issues to work on changes in state law to address mental health crisis services as well.

One of the areas that they looked at was how we respond to mental health crisis situations and particularly serving Section 302 warrants, which are warrants to take someone into custody to put them into a medical care circumstance. We’ve looked at various models around the country. Some are well-known models, as well as some programs within our peer communities in the Big 10. We are currently moving ahead to evaluate and recommend a civilian response team that would work with mental health professionals and law enforcement to address some of those mental health crisis service issues.

Mimi: Is this a high priority?

Tom: Extraordinarily high priority. We believe that is a really critical issue. Over the past number of decades, mental health response, in particular, has shifted to law enforcement in areas where, frankly, law enforcement, even when it’s well trained, is not as equipped to address those issues. We really do think that there are some opportunities here to make changes in the way we respond in those circumstances and address those issues in a better way for the community as a whole.

Mimi: Well, we seem to be making steps. They may be going a bit slowly, but it’s a complicated subject.

Tom: It is. Several decades ago, there were some fundamental changes in the state law in Pennsylvania and in other states that affected the way persons with mental health were addressed. And we really have an opportunity here to make a difference in State College. We’re hopeful that we can take advantage of the great work from this task force and be able to make a difference.

Mimi: That’s the beauty of living here – the town and the gown. We have so much talent on both sides of the avenue. And this is an opportunity to get ahold of that and come out with a good conclusion.

Tom: Absolutely. It’s a high priority for the borough, and I believe for the county as well.

Mimi: You’re truly a unique guy because you have to make it look like it’s easy for these forces to work together. But in a geography where there is a borough, and five contiguous townships, all with their own governments, councils, and rules, is it not time to begin a new conversation about how we consolidate and become one area with one set of rules and ideas. Is that in the wind at all?

Tom: You and I have talked about this before. It’s a real challenge; it’s a challenge in Pennsylvania in general. We have had many conversations, and it’s gone as far as having a question on the ballot 20 years or so ago, before I started working here. It has not been approved yet. It has come up in our strategic planning work here in the Borough of State College – the need to have more consolidation and better joint governance, at least on some of these issues.

Police are one area that where there is some cooperation. The State College Police Department does serves College and Harris townships. And some of the [Council of Governments] programs here in the Centre Region are truly regional programs, like the Schlow Centre Region Library, which is a phenomenal success story about a regional program that works very well.

Mimi: Isn’t this a moment in time when we should consider a serious look into the whole concept of consolidating the Centre Region?

Tom: I agree personally with that assessment. Having at least some level of a single governmental unit makes sense in this region. We’ve got 43,000 people in State College, and about 90,000 to 100,000 people in the Centre Region. Half the population is in State College, and then we see growing populations in the surrounding townships. It makes sense to take a serious look at that in the future. I don’t know that there is political support for it at this point. Still, I would tell you that I think it would help streamline and improve our overall response and service to the community from a management standpoint.

Mimi: Could you give our readers a glance at what’s happening now that we have all these extra apartments in downtown State College?

Tom: It’s still pretty early in the process, but we have seen a real increase in construction of what I would characterize as purpose-built student housing, not only in downtown State College, but in the region. That has added quite a few beds in this area when enrollment at the university has not been growing at that same pace. We’re waiting to really be able to understand what the outcome is. The expectation and the hope that we have had is that this would have the effect of driving down some of the housing costs in other parts of the community as the new units have become available. We are still seeing some demand for student housing and the construction of these projects. So, despite the economy and the pandemic, we continue to see some pressure for additional development of that nature.

We’re in the midst of revising the State College zoning code right now; it’s a project that’s been under way for over a year and probably will be another year before it’s complete. One of the areas that we’ve looked at pretty seriously is density in the downtown core and how that will look going forward. For now, we’re seeing that the new buildings are, in fact, leasing, and we are waiting to see how that impacts other properties. I think our hope and expectation is that we’ll begin to see more housing available that would be affordable due to the supply of housing that would be in the market overall.

Mimi: The overall visitor market is also suffering – hotels and motels.

Tom: Yesah, the hospitality industry, hotels, restaurants, in general, have been really impacted. One of the things that we have seen and we have been part of several conversations with other college communities like Ithaca, New York, and Ames, Iowa, Athens, Ohio, and Gainesville, Florida, is that with the shutdown and the changes that have occurred in these colleges and universities, there really has been a pretty significant impact, especially in the hospitality industry. We don’t have visitors coming to town for football games, Arts Festival, conferences, concerts, shows at the Eisenhower; all of those things have had a pretty significant impact.

Mimi: What has all this done to the borough’s tax revenue?

Tom: In 2020, we did OK, tax-wise. The impact for us has been on refuse rates and payments; it’s been on the parking system. It costs a lot of money to build parking garages, and we’re not seeing the revenue that we would normally see because of the lack of visitors. We’ve had to use a lot of the surplus that normally would come in in that areafund balance for debt service payments and for operating costs. We’ve had some struggles in that area.

But the pandemic this [past] year hit at a point where many people had already paid their property taxes, so we’re concerned about what happens in 2021 and 2022. We’ve taken steps to postpone some capital improvements. We’ve had some hiring freezes occur. If we’ve had vacancies in various positions, we haven’t filled those to try to control both our expenditures and address revenue.

Mimi: How many employees does the borough have?

Tom: We have about 180 employees on an ongoing basis. We’re down from that right now; we’re down probably between 10 and 15 percent in total employment. We’ve had some short-term furloughs, but we’ve avoided layoffs. It’s been mostly vacancies that occur due to retirement or somebody that leaves for another job. Instead of filling those positions immediately, we’ve been leaving them vacant. We have several people positions in the Public Works Department, which we haven’t filled. At this stage, we have some police officer positions that we haven’t filled yet. Pretty much in every department except those that you really couldn’t continue to function without filling a job.

We will have to fill them at some point. But because we’ve deferred services or projects and capital improvements, we’ve been able to manage to continue to operate. We also have a great staff here who has stepped up. They’re phenomenal people, and they work hard for this community.

Mimi: There is a huge amount of [available] commercial space, both in terms of stores and office space, particularly in the heart of downtown. Do you see that as a problem going forward?

Tom: With the new buildings, the zoning code requires additional commercial space. We have quite a bit of commercial space, over 200,000 square feet of new commercial space, coming online over the past few years.

We are working with the Centre County Economic Development Partnership. A good example is the work we did with KCF on their expansion. They are now utilizing the space on the second floor of The Metropolitan at College and Atherton for their headquarters and they’re continuing to grow; we continue to work with them. I think the other concern we have right now, in particular, is that even the older space, because of the stresses from the pandemic, many of the businesses in downtown State College and throughout the county are struggling. We’re concerned that many of them will continue to have trouble. We’ve done some things internally with our Redevelopment Authority to make interest-free small business loans available to some of those businesses, and we’re getting ready to close on 10 or 12 of those loans. I know the county has also allocated a considerable amount of money.

Mimi: How many people have been cited and charged the $300 fee for not wearing a mask?

Tom: It’s in the range of 100 since the ordinance was enacted. We spent a lot of time on the front end with both the Police Department and our community engagement staff, including our ordinance enforcement folks passing out masks and providing education within the community. But then we also have done a fair amount of enforcement on this through the fall.

Most of the response has been positive, but we’ve had a few interactions that weren’t quite as positive. I don’t have first-hand knowledge, but from what I hear, we’ve had people in Centre County who have taken it seriously and truly are trying to do the right things. I hear from people in other parts of Pennsylvania where they do not have that same experience. We are fortunate in this community.

Mimi: Tell me a little bit about the fraternity parties’ status.

Tom: Overall, we had pretty good response from the fraternities. Fraternities are occupied by anywhere from 30 to 70 people. So, 30 residents who have the same household are allowed to be together. We had a lot of calls and reports of gatherings that upon arrival, all residents are of the same household. We had a couple of problems, but overall, we had good cooperation and response from the fraternities and Penn State students. We work closely with Penn State, both with the sorority and fraternity life office at Penn State as well as student affairs and student conduct to address those issues. And between State College and those offices at Penn State, we were able to make a difference in those numbers. But despite our best efforts, we did see a surge in numbers still in September and October, in particular.

Mimi: Are the townships as involved with the university?

Tom: I think they are probably a little more involved now than they used to be. Penn State and State College’s relationship is a little more unique in that College Avenue is a pretty seamless border between the university and the community in that area. We have many of our residents who are student residents in State College. But the townships do have a lot of interaction with Penn State. This is a community with 100,000 people and it’s an area that has grown rapidly. It’s one of the places in Pennsylvania where we’ve seen that kind of rapid growth.

We have an employer here that employs 11,000-plus people and they’ve been great for the economy; as we’ve seen in other recessions, the economy here doesn’t suffer nearly as much as it does in many places. We still see some downturn, and right now, of course, with hospitality and some of those impacts from being a university community that relies on visitors and shows, sports, it has had an impact, but we are very fortunate to have a stable employer.

We’ve worked hard with the Centre County Economic Development Partnership to try to create more economic diversity in the county, to continue to attract the kinds of jobs that would allow graduates from Penn State University, those young professionals, to stay and continue to be an active part in this community. We’ve had some success and continue to work hard on that.

Mimi: Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this interview. I’m sure our readers will be grateful to you.

Tom: Well, I appreciate you asking. I always have time to talk to you.