CLEARFIELD- Tuesday is day number 119 without a state budget, and while Clearfield County is still managing with the reserve funding put in place in past years, the lack of a budget is hurting everyone, including the various agencies in the county that depend on money from the state to continue to operate.
To that end, during Tuesday’s commissioners meeting Controller Robert Edwards noted that the county transferred nearly $900,000 to Children and Youth Services to help them to continue to operate during the budget impasse.
Meanwhile, the county is working on creating a budget for 2026, and Commissioner Dave Glass expressed the frustration of everyone. “It is damn near impossible to figure out [a county budget] without a state budget to figure out where we need to be!”
And Clearfield County isn’t the only county facing this problem. Pennsylvania has 67 counties and all are working on budgets for next year with no idea of what the state will do.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that we are expected to do this budget flying blind,” Glass added, noting that 30-40 percent of the funding is unknown.
The other commissioners agreed, noting that even little things add up, such as the loss of investment income for the county, the damage to small agencies who are unable to pay employees and face losing those employees.
So far, the county hasn’t needed to take out a tax anticipation loan, but other counties haven’t been so lucky, and the interest will not be made up by the state.
The board also voted to adopt resolutions 2025-8 and 2025-9 regarding application and fair housing for Community Development Block Grant funding for projects in the county.
Lisa Kovalick from county planning explained what the amounts would be used for, beginning with non-entitlement municipalities, which are all of the municipalities in the county excluding Clearfield, DuBois, Lawerence Township, Sandy Township and Woodward Township, which have their own entitlement funding.
The non-entitlement funding of $209,984, will be used for housing rehabilitation with $46,093 for administration costs.
In Clearfield borough, funding will be used on Leavy Avenue, with $97,410 for restructuring, resurfacing and stormwater; $20,500 of that money is for administrative costs.
The borough is also acting on behalf of Lawrence Township for an allocation of $130,396. Of that, $106,926 will be used on Good Street in Kerr Addition and $23,470 for administrative costs.
Kovalick said that the township has received complaints from the school bus companies and Area Transportation Authority regarding the narrowness of Good Street, raising safety concerns, and so the street will be widened and reconstructed.
Finally, in Woodward Township, Kendrick Street from Fifth to Hannah streets will be repaired and repaved with $76,367 for the work and $16,980 for administrative costs.
