being a county commissioner in these first two or term of duty as well as some of the things you like to do continuing and why you're running again ok first thing is who is harlan i guess people know me as harlan and i'm going to be the same guy to mars i was yesterday you know my background has been in business i had thirty two years with a as a manager and i also had my own home building business over the last fourteen years before i became commissioner  service at the local level because i served as a school board member twelve years with charters used in school district and spent sixteen years as a supervisor in structures township so i think coming into the county office  that was something that really has been a good training ground for me between the local government activities and the business side of the world so that's kind of my background i have a lovely wife jacqueline four children twelve grandkids and sort of the center of my my wife and eyes attention now as those twelve grandkids as they grew up around us and i can attest to that i had the opportunity to spend the holidays with you a little bit there and that was a wonderful time your wife is fabulous by the way the construction that's happening in washington county being one of the fastest growing how many in this in the country not just in the state you were educated charter houston high school say that's where you graduated you were president of the washing the county builders association so you didn't just do your business you're involved in the so called political organization of that you know in any any area of expertise i think it's good to do what you do best in for instance my company that was my first priority but i also found that doing my construction and being a home builder was also something that you need to get out and help lobby and work for that organization because  building being part of a bigger we're going station the county association allowed us to speak and do our things that were concerning to us as builders and make sure we got it at a higher level the more that you move into that i think the more lobby in our you have to make things happen individually it's hard to make things change so i felt that was my duty to step out and help i was part of it for a while and naturally they end up asking people that are active to take leadership roles and it was a very very encouraging time the construction was going well at that time as we've seen in our area it's been good over the years is a good move to maybe give back a little bit to the industry but you just didn't do that while you were in the construction industry all if you became a president of the washington county township associate or being the supervisor for sixteen years in sharjah stance chip again i saw that that you need to step out the more townships we have thirty two townships in the county of washington and by putting all those counties together as one voice you're able to accomplish more for that local governing organization so again same kind of approach i took in my building business when i became supervisor i was involved with that and ups that was probably one of the shortest presidents because as i was taking over the office i was actually being elected as county commissioner so i was not able to fulfill that for a full term but it was sort of a good feeling to be it will be part of that it also allows you to know what's going on in that area with the other townships which is really been a value to me as a commissioner as a county commissioner everybody well if you use it in an office someplace and go home at five o'clock or whatever in your case that's not the case you're involved in the government number of different organizations including the washington county symphony which i'm very familiar with yes i serve on the board with the washing county symphony orchestra by the way i'll put a plug in if you like music which i'm very much into the music area you want to attend our concerts that we have each year so i'm sure you can go online with the b s o and we'd like to encourage people to understand there's a value here in washing county we have a great symphony orchestra and that's part of what i do i serve on the board there i had the opportunity use those been on a couple times on our programs and i know a guy he  is funny is dynamic he's you know i said but we i agree with you we have a it's a not necessarily a diamond in the rough anymore it's just a diamond by itself and it's a good opportunity for people to get involved with what other organizations are you involved with well i'm involved it's the cap which is year or so she a sion of all the county commissioners around the state actually this is january and i've just taken over i was elected the second vice president at the state local state association and i serve on the board there be involved in a number of community committees are involved with this a cap and again our voice as one of sixty seven counties in pennsylvania we can only do so much to get things to change but by having a part in all sixty seven counties as an organization we can actually move the direction for local government and doing the things that we need to serve the people so i was able to i really  number of veterans and american legion type organizations as a veteran but i mean it's just some things that you just do you enjoy doing the elks lodge which is serving people in the area and so i just kind of reste out i felt that as a commissioner though that i wanted to really work my first three years as working on washing county which is my priority but again being part of the larger organization and being able to have a voice there now i know bit more than just realize that i'm averaging about twenty two hours a week on school functions if not last night i was at the basketball guy and congratulate peter sonship for their victory over baldwin and but you know i try to attend two or three of the functions after school for the students a week and but that doesn't count i said before i came here i had an hour long meet being with the superintendent and our business manager today i'm going back there for another meeting so this  commissioner you're involved i know whenever i was chairman of the republican party we had problems with the election office and i came to you in those problems and i'll fix you know the things that you're involved with on a day to day basis which you paint with a wide brush when you say county commissioner right that you're involved in the in the sheriff's office you're involved in the lays the human relations you're involved in the elections you're a lot involved with the  seniors of washington county the c y s i mean all these all the functions not of not county not this county and places like south point organizations and places that you're trying to bring business into the community so there's it's not when that wide brush of saying you're a washington county commissioner there are so many subtitles on the that that it gets almost ridiculous it's it's challenging at times because the schedule can get very full there are many times where i spend my smy time i've been a manager with a teenty i mean i had to run an operation and i brought my business practices i think to the county level which i think are good to be business oriented along with the my business is producing residence the things that they need that's my that's what i and i spend a lot of time internally in the county doing my job in those areas that we've talked you've talked about but it doesn't stop there because there's organizations around the county as a commissioner they want you to be part of whatever they do and each one of these activities is very important to that organization so it's sort of like a commitment that you make when you take on the county commissioner role that you will be part of that community you'll be out there and they will see you and i take the approach i visit the mon valley the nor other areas of all over the county i try to mix a project somebody that wants something or need some help in an area as far as my chance to get out and work with people and that's a full time job i mean we have fourteen senior centers and we have a health center that's involved are our jail there's a lot of things out there that reach out into the community and so spending time eight hours a day and i spend a lot of time at the office i also then spend my evenings and weekends doing things that are required because people expect you to be there it is without a tie festivals an apple i this job and if you're going to be in this position you better number one like people because you're with them all the time and i do like people i think people know that i think you need to make sure that you're there their issues their their you vent that they want you to ten is something that maybe some small in comparison to the next one but you need to be part of it and they expect that and the more you do that i guess more gets and people get to know you get a chance to talk to  chance to tell you what their problem is in i make a note of that us then myself emails all the time when i'm out sending it back so that i have it the next morning in the office because memory isn't always the said along with that in my mind so but it's an ongoing process but it's now three years in i love what i do and basically it doesn't it's not a burden if you love doing your job and that's where i'm at right now on that well that's that you're an example of a person we talked about before we came in here the teacher that's here loves doing her job and it's nice that with a great program this is this is a sincere help right now it's great to have people that enjoy coming to work you know i've been in places in the military and afterwards that in fact i've seen people who just dread every day of waking up it's like you have to get a horse to pull him out of bed but you know it's nice to see if you enjoy doing what you're doing you do it better for one and if you enjoy doing people around you see that and they then in fact pick up on it and that's contagious you know if you have good people you're working with and all the sudden you want to be better and make them better along the way well couple questions we talked about earlier and i have to admit i usually don't discuss any issues but these are so tricky i want to make sure that you're aware of them we have a newly elected governor right that's coming on board he ran on the idea of taxes and taxes being has th and taxes being used for education right and marcellus shell taxes being used for education but his program and i sat through one of them one time and listen to what he was saying the impact fees were to be then taken and spread around the state to help all the school districts and their budget problems with the pensions and all this stuff if you take my pot of  gold and spread my pot of gold around the whole state i don't have that much gold left ok and how in your opinion now how would that affect washington county in these days of marcello shell and the money and the people that it's coming into our area and affecting our we have the wells philadelphia doesn't have the well right but of our money goes to philadelphia to help their charter school system that in fact we're losing so how do you hear your impression of how this is a tricky question so we're going to take it a couple steps as time this talk first about the impact fee that we have today and i spoke at duke university as part of a panel down there  where i met with people from all around the country there in the different gas areas ok and we are the only state to have an impact fee versus the severance tax what did i find i found that the local communities that were affected around the country that had to provide more infrastructure because of the growth you know new hotels were being built they found that there was very little of that money coming back to the local communities now they did fund some of the school district systems with some of the money so the money would be collected severance tax on production goes to the state used for state budget issues and then some of that comes back to school districts which they fund somewhat anyways at the state level the impact on those areas where they had to put new storyline new water line a new road areas they had no money to do that so they were really under some gun yes the growth was great the economy was starting to really boom but who was paying for the infrastructure to make that happen so impact fee is very very important i think for our communities and our counties are out pennsylvania i don't want it to leave now you put that aside you say where we think we're going to go with this the governor elect mr will is talking about a severance tax it was part of the campaign process i really believe that it's more than just the governor it's our legislators our state senators and representatives are going to have a say so i really think that this school districts around the state are really under a burden education is under the gun pensions and you could talk about all the issues that we can't control if you're sitting on the local school board that i did and you're doing you can't control a lot of the things the health care the salary issues i mean these are things that when what you do have to spend and control is a small part of that so if you go back to the severance tax issue and versus impact i believe both sides of the aisle sitting in harrisburg are going to probably be under the gun to do something to help the school systems throughout the county throughout the county and the state where is the new revenue coming from i think you have to stop and say where are their monies out there that we are already using for something and that's where you start looking at the gas industry which is one of the only things that's really booming today  i think that you're going to probably see i don't have a crystal ball but i think you probably and i hope would say no more than a call from ice come out where impacts the stay in place so that they help the communities that are being impacted by the drilling process then some type of a minimum severance tax would go in hand with that which then could help fund some of the school districts if you keep that at a rate that is marter around look at the rest of the country and look at their rates that they pay and if you keep that into a limited form you might be able to do a little bit of both so we still would be able to with the impact be staying in place find local communities that the same time start putting some money to help through this education process the bigger issues what are we going to do with the education process i think the state needs to step up and do something to say where are we going where are we going to future you know i know one school district very close to my home that three or four years ago pension was four hundred thousand dollars now it's one point three million dollars that can't continue we've got to do something with that so it is a big issue i think that's one of the big things going to happen with the new governor and the house body out there they're going to have to come up with a compromise they're going to have to come and they have a big job to do to make this work well before coming on the air today the news said that the gas company  was going to reduce their staff by nine thousand people because nine thousand worldwide ok we're already seeing some reduction in the gas production here not necessarily in the current wells but potentially the future wells and the future expansion because of the low gas price and let's face it you know absolutely i think there's a couple things with that as the gas prices go down nationally that starts putting a crunch on the budgets of all the gas industry i have a one of our local companies just announced in the paper the other day that they're actually going to be cutting their their overall budget for expenditures  percentage but they're also talking about really concentrating on continue to drill wells and to increase production and so i think we're in a up and down curve over the years you have to you have to count on this if you're looking at spending any money as your receipt that you don't put those all went to operational costs because it may not be there the same each year i think it's going to as gas prices go down they make less profit and so they are not willing to maybe do new leases right away they have plenty of property around all these companies that they can go out and develop what they've already put money into so i do think the cost of gas natural gas and other things are something that's going to keep us kind of moving slower but not stopping production where companies down in texas for instance where is the boom right now it's in the marcellus shale it's in southwestern pennsylvania very right underneath us and so a lot of the companies where they're producing in other areas that's just kind of going along but they're moving their resources into new locations i think another thing that's going to impact this is the pipelines are being talked about and being put in like the down in delaware if you can't put the gas we have a lot of gas being produced right now we have to do two things one gas is going to be here for us in the should keep our cost down which drives against this mov same time we have to have infrastructure to move the gas to other locations where they need it and basically that keeps the production moving on ok that's a big thing that's going to happen there and so as we look forward we also have  in western pennsylvania where gas is the gas that has the butane a propane the the the other heavier gases they're still worth a lot of money and so as long as those gases are being produced there is some market for that as we move forward well as whenever we were growing up here it was the coal industry yes everything was when i was a coal miner forty three years and now all that has shifted to another form of energy when i we're gone and they're adults that in fact they'll be talking about solar or wind or something else taking over after we exhaust everything we've we've used right one of the problems and i didn't mention this to you earlier course is one of the problems is oklahoma is now on the verge of banning shell operations because of the fact that they have now become one of the largest earthquake areas in the country with more active earthquakes than ever before is that on anybody's radar i think that if we're doing our job as a as a people just people in general we need to balance what goes on in our thinking and i think that we don't know all the answers for future on that i know that some some discussion was where you are injecting the frac water into reservoirs underground that that's supposed the ohio and other areas that they said that was causing earthquakes ok i don't know that we have all the answers which is the thing we always need to consider that we have to leave for the future so as i know my facts so far i don't know that these things really cause it but you always want to be learning and progressing we're in a work in progress here in this gas industry in western pennsylvania and i think we need to learn more about the environmental impacts be careful what we do now there's a lot of things out there you work on emotion or you work on the factual person i try to make sure i know the facts before i see talk about it so i think it's always a concern out there not knowing for sure but i think i also don't go on the side of being too much for and against these kind of work that balance your thinking on where we're going on the gas industry we've talked about well this this situation down in euston unemployment in washington county let's talk about that for looking i think unemployment you know in two thousand and eleven we were the third in the nation in growth in jobs ok i believe that marcellus show has had a lot to do with that but there's other things out there if you look at south point if you look a lot of the areas around the county we basically have job growth been going on because i think we've been working toward making sure that there's a place for business to be here and businesses either come in with the marcellus shale because they're part of a a range resources or console or others where they're they're part of the drilling industry but we're working that the businesses that come in that could use that gas which is where our future should be planning for the future making sure that businesses are brought in and encouraged to come in to make sure that there's jobs for the future after the construction phase of the drilling is done and productions going on for the next fifty years we need businesses that will be here because of that but there's businesses coming in because we are in a good location in washington county we're in the crossroads of east west north south we're near the airport on this side the new southern about ways coming in and i think we've had a lot of job growth because we are in a good located you know when they say in a real estate market location location location we have a lot of that going for us and so it's a combination of encouraging business the marcellus sh e education hospitals local we have here we have great hospital health care we have great universities we have a lot to offer people who are around the country so i encourage them to come to not only the pittsburgh area but washing county we have a future here i was amazed when i drove down the road the other day i saw a sign for beaver county community college who happens to be at softball yes allegheny county community college is that solid point  present their opportunity to get some of those funds of those organizations that are coming in to talk about software for a minute fifteen twenty years ago that looks like it was never getting off the ground nobody was moving there nothing was happening mor building was still in place right and it looked like more gallons of basically with some nice roads and now it is i see in the paper the other day you're adding sports fields to that facility and i was quite amazed by that  sort of going to be a one stop shop for all the people who live there and around there actually the sports fields or the cecil township they have a park of this joining south point and so a lot of that is going on there also a cecil township  they have got the advantage of having south point in their their minister power but they're also taking advantage of that and working to make sure that they the residents there and the people that work there have all the recreation and everything there and basically we can talk more about that but there's an expansion going on and around the county we're looking for properties where we can put the next customer the next business that wants to go into washing county that's going to be a daunting task because  we make sure they get to college  to make college possible for anyone with a mind to get there a script to follow i learned that firsthand the day my son had a life threatening allergic reaction or anaphylaxis anaphylaxis can happen when someone comes into contact with their allergic triggers it could happen anywhere anytime so you have to do all you can to learn the signs and symptoms and know which allergens to avoid know your wall by being prepared and learn what you can do to take action if anaphylaxis occurs learn more at end of life as one on one  and my kids were going through school do they went to college or there were really not a lot of jobs good well paying jobs good paying jobs out there because the mills of all closed industry was moving out of the area federals so you looked at ten years till now and if you didn't get a college degree or if you didn't go to some type of schooling in that area or the military or the military i was an option you're now looking at what am i going to do with technical in nature we still encourage colleges you know when i was on the school board it was i how many kids went to school callers was a grading process of how successful you were in the in your education today there's six figure jobs in the gas industry and areas surrounding that that now make it a choice i still encourage students my four children are got their college degrees i still encourage that because even in those fields like the gas industry and others you still need educated people you need engineers you need computers you need all the types of things you need in the business world today but there's also those students that either don't want to go to school anymore but they love doing things with their hands and so what we have done and we've been working with our education organizations our botox course and we're talking with the student council student advisors the principals the superintendents trying to say there is a alternative education process that allows you get a good paying job as we move into the future that's taken a lot of cooperation with a lot of people if you're going to be a welder or welders make good money now and what happens here with the gas industry coming in there's a lot of other companies out there that can't find the students and the people that are able to do their jobs because they one company in the gas field takes them right away and so we're being constantly asked by businesses around the county we need jobs we need people prepared to do the jobs that we offer and so there are alternatives out there now it's a college degree it's a technical school it's coming out of high school through the vote act that could land you jobs so we have to make sure everybody's educated in the fact to make sure that we're feeding the students and the adults into the jobs that are out there well one of the nice things talking about education and the vote tech all the votes act for washington county is now looking into becoming a community college right they will be able to offer courses and credits for those fields that lead into the oil industry which is such a big opportunity for us as school boards to be able to give as you say that opportunity you know  our i graduated i went to pitt i want to mediately dip it like everybody was expected to do and after the first thirty days luckily for my parents if you at that time if you left college you had the opportunity to get your money back yes and they  refunded your payment and my parents put that back in their savings and i then sat for a month wondering what i was going to do before i went into the air force which was probably the absolute best move i ever did because six years later then i decided now it's time for me to go to college and i went to college while i had a family and everything else but you know what i mean going to school ever since and so you know but that's what i love to do and but that didn't hit me whenever i was and when i coming out of the who knows what they want to do whenever you come out of high school you know absolutely you're on you know i speak a lot to leadership washington to the different colleges groups and to students and a lot of the students say look i'm seventeen years old i'm ready to graduate from high school and i don't know what i want to do and they're frustrated with it when i was seventeen and graduating in school i wanted to go the air force by the way then go to the air force i went to college went to play basketball you know where my life has taken me tremendously a different direction than what i ever thought when i was in scores and i've said to the lot of the younger students i said look at all things out there don't don't kind of focus on if you know what you want to do go for it but you know i also say involuntary with organizations you may find out as you volunteer that you are put in a position where you never did something before now you do something and people say it you see and you find out that's the big disability that you have and that sets the focus do not be discouraged if you're a student ready ready there are things that you're going to see as you mature as you talked about you mature you see that there are other things that you like to do and areas to go into but knowing in high school sometimes what you want to be when you grow up i'm still try to bring it out and you know i've done a lot of different things that i never would imagine that i would that don't don't close the doors on opportunities that vision open try things that you're not comfortable with if they're good by the way and make sure that you're you're you're you're seeing all sides of the world to make to maybe that becomes your career it's amazing you say that my son for example never took never took a computer course all the way through high school and through college and now he's the chief of cybersecurity for a major international organization which is which is as we've talked about earlier by people coming in and loving the job that they're doing sure is because of the fact that every day if you look at your job as an opportunity for growth as an opportunity for development an and it's hard to figure out how to treat each one nice or good or different each day because every day they flip the switch and all of a sudden they're a different person and you're trying to adjust and you know parents and i always thought my dad was the dumbest guy in the world until all of a sudden as i grew up i realized that he taught me so much stuff after he and he's been passed now for almost thirty years and it's just when you look back and you realize the the bits of information and the path that they try to put you on is a general path yes you know course they're always you know always have physicians who want their kids to be doctors or attorneys who want their kids and there's nothing wrong with that is not wrong if the kids want to i would have and but that's it's nice to see that our schools are in fact college credits i think is a really positive move for county as well as you know it's not it's not washington county community college at this point but it's a nice step towards that but what you said was washing county community college you know we've talked about having our own community college in washington and it sounds nice and this may be a good idea but guess what we talked earlier about all the different colleges that have come into washington because they see potential they see the growth they see the future for washing county that everyone is they're providing that and honestly as a as a county commissioner one of my jobs is to make sure the taxpayer is taken care of right and so if i can have these niversities and colleges sending their people in we have california we have some good colleges and there were providing a cross section along with the technical schools of educating the younger and some of the adult classes and  it's good use private money where we can use private money and i say that not knowing where all the money comes from but i know it's not coming out of a county budget and that allows me to keep pax's down that allows us to keep a very efficient and effective  one is what one thing have you looked at and you've worked on and worked with through conclusion c i didn't tell you this beforehand that you're very very satisfied with that you're happy with the outcome and the second is what issue have you been looking at trying to fix that is seems to be the most daunting well i think one of the specific objectives i had and as one commission we work we have three commission and we work as a team and we have good relationships up there so we don't do anything in a vacuum but one of the things that i've really worked on for probably two years now out of my three years was working on a twenty four hour booking center a cessna so what well what it says is we have people that are detained join the day and they have to all go through a booking process fingerprints data input picture taking things like that before they're put into maybe incarceration and what we had out there was our law enforcement officers during the night after four thirty to eight o'clock in the morning type scenario basically if they would detain someone let's say in peter's township charters wherever they would have to hold that detainee maybe up to four hours or so before they could have them go through an arraignment with him with the magic local justice ok and so what we did was we incorporated the book and said it was a daytime only thing into a twenty four seven day a week operation where if someone is detained they are actually taken right into our facility  r correctional facility they go through the process they have their rainman is set time and they either are released on bond or something or they're put into incarceration that is allowed our place officers around the county to get back out to their communities and not have to i'll call it babysitting some a detainee for up to four hours at a time and lousy communities to have their protection back where they belong and so that was one mission and i've been involved with i headed the committee i put people together we work with everybody making sure that it was being done right ok so that's one little side people may say so what does that affect that but it does affect people everything that we work on effects are people in the county and i think as i look forward we had c y s which is really important in fact what i found as a commissioner is that out of our two hundred five million dollar budget total one hundred twenty million is spent on human services that could be our health center which we worked a lot to make sure quality is there which is really is a way that could be our c y s today children and youth up to our seniors are homeless our veterans all of those come under human services and what i've found as a commissioner that those are the areas that really you don't see but it hits a lot of people in washington county and a lot of our budget is spent and that money is actually federal state money also coming into our total budget but as we move forward one of the things i'm working on is planning two things i had on my objective three years ago when i came into office what i wanted to see as communicate not only internally but with our people our residents our constituents are out there and so i work hard to make sure communication is on the top of our list i think that's important you could do a great job you can do everything that's needed if you let people know what you're doing and how to get  services then you're falling short second thing was planning and i'm a big planner coming from the private sector where i did development i did home building planning to me is looking for the future that's our job  commissioner is making sure what we have yet great time in washington d c we know everything's economically we are really doing a good thing not us it's happening around us we're letting it happen but planning for the future some the things i've been working on what i think we need to work on it infrastructure not to possess a thing it's yours sanitary stores in your water and if you want to build your communities for the future you need to have  have to have water lines installed and therefore then the private sector comes in and they start developing homes which just spurs the economy work skews the work a lot with our planning that apartment to say let's make sure that we're looking county wide on planning and we're moving forward that's why i'm running for election again there's a lot of things that are working but i don't want to i don't want to see him stop and i look at planning county while this look at parks and recreation know we have mango park ten mile in cross creek and the and the in the panhandle trail those are our county parks we're really doing a lot the whole new subject there but basically if we look at all the communities out there they have parks they have and they're struggling sometimes to just bring dollars together so i would like to see us do a network of parks and recreation where we have our parks of the county we don't need to buy more parks let's work out with the communities to help them individually work on their park areas which could then create a network a plan for the county if you look at bridges roads all of this basically if you think the whole county and you plan for it and use that objectives you might not meet all of them but you sure are going to make progress and so going forward those are big areas that we need to concentrate here's another one out of left field a variant on the  peter sonship ok i heard one time pays a little bit above forty percent of the county's taxes ok out of the fourteen school districts that are in fact in a washington county reassessments taking place i thought you would skip that question now i mean how well is that is that going to cause and i and i say this years as a realtor i say this because of property values and peters keep going up but that's not the same throughout the county there are some areas i'm sorry to say the property values are plummeting still and that's after the so called recession and all that other stuff is peter's hardship going to be in the future under the reassessment as far as you can see and then i realize we don't have a crystal ball here are we going to be hit with more of a tax load because the township and the school district have tried to do things right and people are still moving in our property value i think our eyes solve the other night during a school board meeting that the property values in ten years ago and up one hundred million dollars in peter sonship  washington county also i might add as one of my researches that has proven has one of the highest county tax rates in the state ok how does peters township and at the end how do they come since i think second lowest taxes in south western pennsylvania overall we don't want change at that encourages people coming in that kearns is the spring of the economy ok so number one we fought hard and i come in in the middle of that process but i continued to carry that forward we did not want to do a reassessment we were forced to do it by couple school districts that sued us in the courts and so we had to make fun and we did all the legal things we could do to delay and not have to do reassessment given that fact one of the concerns is we don't know impact on individuals as we go forward right so what i'm looking at is a reassessment we're in the middle of data collection process we're going to be looking at each individual area as you said peters township is not a moron valley city that's struggling ok what without name each locality in pallies are going to be structured to what the value of the property is so i would say that a a house being built in pater's township and being built somewhere else in the county  are the same house same materials as a builder i would have built a house for the same cost but the value of that is much greater because of where it's located that all has to be taken into consideration in reassessment and it needs to be done right that's the main focus it has to be done right and it's a concern we've had can they do that right but we're hoping that that will happen we feel it has to happen right but when you look at properties in peter's township you know peter's township has a m because of the value of their property in the school districts or the big basically that's your big rate sure sure the school district is collecting x amount of dollars today on so many properties under reassessment they should be collecting the same amount of money on the same properties but it's going to be redistributed that's going to be a local peters township or local school district the county is going to stay revenue neutral on what we do right today and let's say we're around thirty seven million dollars we collect on real estate taxes on one hundred nineteen thousand properties throughout the county those properties are going to be the same properties tomorrow i'm still going to collect the same revenue number but it's go redistributed my milage will be adjusted if the value of the properties go up then my milage is going to come down to compensate at the same value so if i'm still collecting revenue neutral when i'm done and people say to me and i hear this question all the time you know what's going to happen to me and i'll use the example of let me take my own personal example i built a house in one thousand nine hundred seventy nine the sest value at the county was one hundred thousand dollars i sell the house for three hundred thousand and thirty four years later what that says is my property value my assessed value should go up three times but my taxes won't go up three times so we're going to see how this floats we're going to try to get the right market value for the right community on every property it's what you think you should be able to sell your house for it should be pretty close to your new assessed value if it isn't and i start questioning it if it doesn't come out my old house they sold doesn't come out close to what i sold it for in the sest value or it's way higher then i would question where i'm going to be and i'm a number man i'm a math major member and i want to make sure that that's being done right so peters township residents that have properties it depends on where you really are assessed now you could stay the same it might not make any impact on you and you could go somewhat up and somewhat down based on how the new assessment values come up the other secret to this is once we do that i don't want to go have to spend seven hundred million dollars again to do reassessment again down the road we should be able to do a mechanism which is we've already work that we keep updated based on market values what sales over the next years the next two or three years you could then adjust everybody because you're putting the right values on everybody right now you've got all local county and school district to try to make sure that their revenues are where they need to be school districts minister pallies also have sort of a a process where they can increase the millions a little bit school districts are under  a cap issue that they have to get approval for but you know there is a five percent or whatever that could be done that's not reassessment that's in the process if they keep revenue neutral you know the school districts seen their revenues same that means not everybody's taxes can go up because you can't keep the revenues same and everybody's taxes go up it's going to be we just don't know where and how they're going to be affected well that's an issue lay said of course pax's are always an issue  we have local communities that are being taxed at five hundred dollars on an average three hundred thousand dollars home or right course some areas of the county three hundred thousand is not an average by any snow as an ira and it happens to be about  that but there's a there's local communities that were always compared to that are raising their taxes three and four hundred dollars we're looking at an increase here probably one hundred ninety something somewhere that on that kind of an average you know  it's hard when every eight mills or nine mills of increased tax well just for the pension wow issues in the school district and trying to keep those mills low i mean pretty soon either you have no money whatsoever to run your district or you try to keep up and thank god for the many years now probably for the last twenty the school district has kept their their issues and the money issues and everything pretty well and balance and matter of fact we're probably one of the best financially solvent school districts right now in washington if not in western pennsylvania and that's what i said but it's taken a lot of effort by the lot of people to just doesn't happen no it doesn't and i said in and recent article in the allman act some of the comments see an educated comments that were made after the articles written the article of course i question some of the things in the article itself i was at the meeting it certainly i didn't see with some of those things but some of the comments that were made people just don't understand that the school district in peters is a main reason why the property values keep going up it's a good good district the township is doing well but but the school district were comparable with other districts that are for example over st clair i think i mentioned earlier cost about twenty two thousand dollars per student we cost about eleven thousand and four five hundred dollars per student that's watching your money because we're in the very close ballpark with them when it comes to scores and academic and writings like christmas yes yes so i said the taxes of course are always going to be a big issue i mean i don't like him going know being the voting on them is just as bad because when i go back to meet my monthly bills to i'm retired i'm on a fixed income so i mean it does affect me but when if it's going to challenge or challenge the bottom line is i'm at the county commission position now because it's something i wanted to do i've had my careers i've had my jobs although i've found that going to work every morning is my job now but now i look forward to i think we've accomplished a lot of the last three years i enjoy what i do it's not something that i worry about next election and i guess we worry about lections where we can't be there to do the job but i think my focus has been on the people and what i can do for the people i do not ask someone when they walk in the door are you registered to vote are you a democrat republican independent whatever i basically say what is the issue what can i do is there something i can do tell them if there's something that i already know about being in the local government has given me a good backing i know a lot of things that go on local ordinances and that but bottom line what i'd like to say is that i'm there because i want to be there to help the people i'm not a political career person as some people like to think this is my third year on office yes i spent twelve years on the school board you know what that's all about i spent sixteen years as a supervisor in township but that was all working to help my local my local municipality my local school district at the county level much more diverse i'm able to do a lot more things to help people and i'd like to continue to do that that's the main thought i have a lot of things that i've been able  initiate to get moving on that i'd like to see to come to conclusion and another four years i think will allow me to do a lot of that work along with my my peers ok well harlan we're coming to the end of our time but i'm sure that we're not going to come to the end of your term a duty year i want to thank you very much for coming thank you thank you and once again i've known you for many years we belong to the same car club and so i don't want people to think well you know they don't know each other at all  we've known each other for many years but i'll thank you very much for coming on thank you very much for being with us and we'll we'll see you the next time on talking politics in western pennsylvania