Luzerne County Council approved late last month<\/a>, establishes a new operating entity called \u201cAVP Bi-County Partnership\u201d for the purposes of federal grant administration and compliance. That entity will serve as the federal sponsor of the airport in Pittston Twp. and receive funding disbursed by the Federal Aviation Administration, which had asked the two counties to ratify a new partnership agreement replacing one from 1968 under which both counties were sponsors.<\/p>\nAttorney Donald Frederickson, a co-solicitor for the airport board made up of officials from both counties, told Lackawanna County commissioners last week that the new agreement is the product of a \u201ctwo-year endeavor that we\u2019ve been working through to get resolved with Luzerne County, our sister county, and the FAA, which have all signed off on this agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust by way of a little bit of history, (in) January of 1945, 81 years ago, Lackawanna and Luzerne County entered into an agreement with the U.S. government to develop the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport,\u201d Frederickson said. \u201cIn 1968, 58 years ago, the counties entered into their first agreement to run the airport. It\u2019s two pages, literally, but it worked. \u2026 And the counties have run, developed the airport into what it is today, which is a showpiece for Lackawanna and Luzerne County.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo years ago the FAA came to us and said: \u2018we don\u2019t like your two-page agreement, it doesn\u2019t give us protections particularly with regard to the FAA funding,\u2019\u201d he continued. \u201cWe get a lot of FAA funding. They wanted language in there that guaranteed where the funding was going to, who is going to account for the funding and so forth, so that\u2019s when we started redrafting the agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new partnership and operating pact \u201cpreserves what we have historically done at the airport,\u201d Frederickson said, with both counties serving as equal partners on a joint board of managers made up of three representatives from each. Lackawanna County\u2019s commissioners will continue to serve as its representatives on the airport board, while Luzerne\u2019s representatives will continue to consist of the county manager and two members of the county council.<\/p>\n
The chairpersonship and vice chairpersonship of the board will also continue to rotate on an annual basis, with Lackawanna holding the chair in even-numbered years and Luzerne holding it in odd-numbered years. The vice chairpersonship rotates annually on the opposite schedule, with Lackawanna holding it in odd-numbered years and Luzerne in even-numbered years.<\/p>\n
The airport board recently reorganized to make Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak chairman and Luzerne County Councilman Chris Belles vice chairman for 2026.<\/p>\n
For a motion or resolution to pass under the new partnership agreement, each county must agree to the action and a majority of each county\u2019s member representatives \u201cmust be obtained.\u201d That, too, is unchanged.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, you have to have a majority of each county to pass anything at the airport,\u201d Frederickson told the Lackawanna County commissioners. \u201cI\u2019ve been there for, it\u2019ll be 15 years in March at the airport, and I can honestly say there\u2019s been very few disagreements between the two counties in running the airport, which I think is a testament to both counties.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chermak, who said keeping the airport going is \u201ccritical,\u201d thanked Frederickson and Luzerne County officials for their work on the agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting this done now allows us to continue getting our funding through the FAA and the federal government,\u201d he said. \u201cWe get compliments \u2026 all the time. We have one of the nicest, cleanest, safest, convenient airports in the country, let alone in (the) northeast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luzerne County Councilman John Lombardo touted the agreement in late January.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely resolves a lot of the issues that I think we\u2019ve been trepidatious about,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cSo I\u2019m very happy to support this, and I look forward to more partnerships with Lackawanna County because I think that there are a lot more opportunities than just here at the airport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lackawanna County\u2019s vote to approve the agreement was unanimous, with Chermak and fellow Commissioners Thom Welby and Bill Gaughan all voting to ratify the pact.<\/p>\n
Each county \u201cshall share equal responsibility for all costs and expenses associated with operating the Airport,\u201d the agreement notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 Lackawanna County commissioners approved last week a new agreement with neighboring Luzerne County for the continued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,803,139,28,4487,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-109276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pittston-township","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}