County commissioners approve payables, grants, contracts and amphitheater extension
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Summary
At their Feb. 18 meeting the Lackawanna County Board approved multiple routine and programmatic measures — payables, grants for juvenile probation and the arts, procurement-card policy, a UGI natural gas broker agreement and a one-year Live Nation amphitheater extension — and awarded a bridge contract.
Lackawanna County commissioners on Feb. 18 approved a slate of resolutions covering routine payables, grant awards, contracts, appointments and capital projects.
The board adopted Resolution 26-0051 to approve county payables: general-fund checks in the amount of $2,926,891.48 and electronic fund transfers (including payroll) totaling $29,724,051.75. Commissioners also approved a Juvenile Court Judges' Commission grant for the county juvenile probation department (Resolution 26-0043), a $247,306 award the chief probation officer said would be used to implement evidence-based strategies without additional county cost.
Financial and procurement actions included adoption of a procurement-card program with PNC (Resolution 26-0045). Chief Financial Officer Dave Bozzoni described the program as a phased approach to reduce small-dollar check processing and said participating departments will face training requirements and controller review of charges.
The board authorized a five-year master natural-gas sales agreement with UGI Energy Services for courthouse and prison accounts (Resolution 26-0050); the CFO said the relevant accounts together represent about $160,000 of the county's natural-gas budget and recommended retaining UGI as broker after a competitive review.
The board approved a ninth amendment to the concert concession agreement with the Lackawanna County Performing Arts Center Authority and Live Nation (Resolution 26-0054), extending the contract one year to Dec. 31, 2026. Commissioners said the short extension will allow further negotiations on a longer-term deal and provide time to address traffic and parking problems at the Montage Mountain amphitheater.
Cultural funding actions included $265,000 in arts and cultural operational grants distributed to 41 organizations (Resolution 26-0047) and $100,000 in community arts project grants (Resolution 26-0048). The county entered a mural joint venture with Scranton Tomorrow Inc. and approved a $72,500 artist contract for a mural at 307 Penn Avenue (Resolutions 26-0052 and 26-0053).
Infrastructure actions included awarding the Plank Road bridge replacement contract in Clifton Township to the low bidder (Resolution 26-0042) for $1,067,000, which the county engineer described as a permanent replacement for a critical crossing. The board also completed several reappointments to the multipurpose stadium improvement board and to the Lackawanna County Housing Authority (Resolutions 26-0046 and 26-0049).
All resolutions presented in the meeting were moved, seconded, and approved by voice vote as recorded in the public meeting. Where specific roll-call tallies were not read into the record, the clerk recorded the motions as adopted.
Next steps: Departments named in approved agreements will complete implementation steps, the CFO said, and staff will coordinate training and controller oversight for the procurement-card rollout.