WYOMING, LUZERNE CO. (WOLF) — Luzerne County Manager, Romilda Crocamo, held a town hall meeting Wednesday in Wyoming as a part of her series of visits to different municipalities across the county.
So far, she has hosted meetings in Nanticoke, Hazleton, and Back Mountain, all with the sole purpose of listening to the different viewpoints of the area and finding out what people want out of their county government.
“I want people to know that the staff at the county works very hard and they do a very good job. We do these town hall meetings because I want to hear what all of you want from the county and what you want from your county government,” saidCrocamo.
During the meeting, the County Manager has highlighted various topics of discussion including road repair, human services, and financial challenges.
Crocamo gave some insight on the fiscal challenges the county is presented with.
“We have a huge debt-service right from the get-go of twenty-five millions dollars. We’ll have that until 2029 when our debt-service is cut in half and in 2030, we’ll be debt-free. We’ll be able to do more of the work without needing to scrutinize what needs to be done first… We’re trying very hard to make the government more efficient and reduce our expenses. We’re going to be more aggressive in our grant applications. We hope that we will be able to partner with municipalities to get a lot of this work done,”said Crocamo.
One of the more prominent issues brought up from the public was the upkeep of roads and bridges.
Crocamo expressed the significance of needing to prioritizemaintenance on the infrastructure, going on to say thatnew protocols are currently being developed.
“We have over three hundred bridges and about a hundred and twenty miles of roads. We’re developing a maintenance protocol for our bridges with a lot of software that we use for mapping, planning, and zoning. With that, we’ll be able to prioritize what roads should be worked on,”said Crocamo.
The next county town hall meeting will be in October. The exact date and location is yet to be announced.