All Columbia Borough offices will be closed on Tuesday, March 14, 2017 due to inclement weather.

Borough of Columbia
March 13, 2017

SNOW EMERGENCY

A Snow Emergency will be in effect in the Borough of Columbia beginning at 10:00 PM, Monday, March 13, 2017. The Snow Emergency will remain in effect until further notice. The Snow Emergency will be to facilitate clean-up efforts in the Borough.

Vehicle travel on Borough Streets marked as “Snow Emergency Routes” shall be in accordance with the Borough’s “Snow Emergency Ordinance” except for emergency situations. No person shall operate a vehicle on any Snow Emergency Route in such a manner or in such condition as to allow or permit such vehicle to become stalled on a “Snow Emergency Route” either by reason of the fact that the driving wheels are not equipped with chains or proper tires, by the exhaustion of the fuel supply to the vehicle, or by abandonment of the vehicle.

Parking on “Snow Emergency Routes” shall be prohibited. Parking is available in Borough Parking Lots located at Front and Locust Street, next to Borough Hall on Locust and in the former telephone company lot in Avenue H between 2nd and 3rd Street. Parking will be permitted after the street has been cleared. Residents are reminded it is illegal to throw snow in the street and to place various items along Borough Streets to reserve parking.

The Borough shall have the authority to remove and impound, or to order the removal and impounding of any vehicle parked or abandoned on a “Snow Emergency Route” during the Snow Emergency and to remove any items left on the streets. During clean-up residents will be notified to move their vehicles on a street by street basis.

Residents are further reminded to remove snow from sidewalks per Columbia Borough Code.

The following Streets have been designated “Snow Emergency Routes”:

Locust Street, Front to Fifth Street                                                  
North Third Street, Locust to Cedar Street

Chestnut Street, Second to Fifth Street                                      
North Fifth Street, Chestnut to Locust Street

Lancaster Avenue, Locust to Malleable Road                      
Kinderhook Road

Ironville Pike, Ninth to Borough Limit                                        
Ninth Street, Ironville Pike to Lancaster Ave

Declared this 13th Day of March, 2017

Leo S. Lutz, Mayor

Borough of Columbia

Borough Offices: 308 Locust Street, Columbia PA 17512 | Phone: 717-684-2467

Borough

                         318 Avenue I

Columbia Spy has confirmed that an apparent shooting victim was transported to a local hospital this morning. Police responded to 318 Avenue I this morning and found that a resident of the home suffered a gunshot wound earlier in the morning at another location in the borough. The time of the shooting remains unclear. Police are investigating.

By Jim Zachary
CNHI Regional Editor
Editor, The Valdosta Daily Times
Posted on February 23, 2017 by SW Admin

Every action of government is your business.

Every document held in government halls is your piece of paper.

Every penny spent by government is your money.

From the courthouse to the statehouse to the White House, government belongs to the governed and not the governing.

You have the right to know what the governing are up to, always.

We are self-governed.

The only way the public, and the press, can hold government accountable is by having unfettered access to its deliberations and the documents it holds.

Transparency is not liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat.

The media champions open government in its traditional role as the Fourth Estate, knowing that independent checks and balances are critical to our liberty.

When city council, county commission or the board of education brokers a deal behind closed doors and conceals documents containing important information the public wants and needs to know our freedoms are compromised.

Local government has the biggest impact in our lives on a day-to-day basis.

Whether it is in the form of property taxes, sales taxes, business taxes, state-shared dollars or federal grants, loans and funding, local government is 100 percent taxpayer funded. The decisions being made, the monies being spent and the records being kept by city hall, the county commission, the board of education or the hospital authority affect us all, and when government is allowed to operate behind closed doors, it grows out of control, is not responsive to the public and subject to corruption.

Elected officials — from the school board member to the President of the United States, must remember they answer to the people, not to professional government bureaucrats, not to government lawyers and not to their elevated campaign advisers

It may be true the public has lost a lot of confidence in the national media, but imagine a government run amuck without media watchdogs holding it in check.

Even Thomas Jefferson, who battled with the press, at times excoriating newspapers in his letters, understood that a free press with unfettered access was essential to the health of democracy.

Jefferson would grow irritated with newspapers, even writing, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,” but he is also the man who famously wrote in a letter to Edward Carrington in 1787, “And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

When you ask to see the county’s operating budget or challenge whether city council has the right to go into a closed session, remember it’s your right. It’s your business.

CNHI Regional Editor Jim Zachary for Georgia and Florida newspapers is editor of The Valdosta Daily Times, the director of the Transparency Project of Georgia, a member of the board of directors of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and vice-chair of the Red & Black newspaper serving the University of Georgia. Zachary can be contacted at jim.zachary@gaflnews.com.