READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution Thursday to authorize a funding request for the proposed regional youth detention facility in Bern Township.<\/p>\n
The request is to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, asking for $5 million in state capital investment funds to support the establishment and renovation of a regional juvenile detention facility.<\/p>\n
The request is part of a broader initiative of an intergovernmental agreement among Berks, Lehigh, Lackawanna, Delaware and Dauphin counties, which is seeking a combined $25 million investment.<\/p>\n
Berks County partnered with the other counties to address a statewide shortage of juvenile detention beds and provide more consistent and locally controlled placements for youth requiring secure detention.<\/p>\n
With a five-county model, each county will be guaranteed eight beds in the proposed 40-bed facility.<\/p>\n
Under the cooperative agreements, each county will share in the operating costs for the Berks County facility.<\/p>\n
Wyomissing resident Crystal Kowalski asked the commissioners about the proposed budget for the facility.<\/p>\n
Chief Administrative Officer Kevin S. Barnhardt said the county is still awaiting final documentation from the engineer, which will then be sent to an estimator so that there is a hard cost before going out to bid on the project.<\/p>\n
The center is planned at the former youth center the county closed in 2012.<\/p>\n
In other business, the commissioners voted to send letters of support for federal funding resources from several groups for the Colebrookdale Railroad Corridor, including:<\/p>\n
A $25 million BUILD Transportation Grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to fund the Iron Multimodal Hub in Pottstown.<\/p>\n
A $3 million congressional directed spending request to support the return of passenger service to Pottstown by way of the Steel River Station and Ironbridge Hotel project.<\/p>\n
A Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements grant from the Federal Railroad Administration to address infrastructure needs on the railroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution Thursday to authorize a funding request…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[77917,43668,10122,41295,22581,128,130,129,88464,88465,24950],"class_list":["post-199610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county-residential-center","tag-crystal-kowalski","tag-federal-railroad-administration","tag-kevin-s-barnhardt","tag-pennsylvania-general-assembly","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-regional-youth-detention-facility","tag-the-federal-railroad-administration","tag-u-s-department-of-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199610","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=199610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}