(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

On a cold and gloomy Wednesday at the Beaver County courthouse, the Beaver County Commissioners’ work session started on a sunny note as Treasurer Sandie Egley presented her annual report.

For the second consecutive year, Beaver County’s tax numbers are steadfastly positive. 95% of taxes were collected totaling $53.2 million dollars, paralleling the record rate from 2022. Additionally, the County gained $1.7 million in total interest over the year, including significant increases in bank interest. Over $1.1 million was gained through Premier Savings–up from $854,565 in 2022–and over $38,000 was gained through Huntington Bank, up from $2,824 in 2022.

Parks & Recreation director Tony Caltury also had something sunny to report, but not in a good way. “With the nice weather,” Caltury stated, “this Saturday’s Snow Shovel Riding Championship is looking bleak. We’ll make the official announcement on our social medias tomorrow about it, with the hopes of making it up the following Saturday on the 4th.”

Emergency Management Service director Eric Brewer spoke about the ongoing aftermath following the East Palestine train derailment, in which eighteen different agencies associated with Beaver County EMS assisted in resolving the initial situation. “Our staff is overwhelmed and tired,” Brewer stated, “however, I couldn’t ask for a better group.”

Brewer noted that because of the assistance to the train derailment, Beaver County lost twelve sets of Hazmat gear that will need to be replaced; early estimates have the cost for replacement gear at roughly $50,000. Brewer stated that the cost of replacing the gear should not fall on the taxpayers of Beaver County. “My goal is to get what Beaver County deserves out of this,” he added. “We’re not asking for more, but just compensated.”

Solicitor Garen Fedeles notified municipalities that were awarded ARPA funding for projects will be receiving letters shortly regarding the timeline for municipalities to spend the money and initiate projects. “That money has to be spent by 2024; what the county is looking for is for those projects to be initiated by no later than the end of this year,” Fedeles explained. “The rationale for that is if this money isn’t spent and the county needs time to reallocate it. So that way, if it isn’t used, we’d have to give it back to the U.S. Treasury.”

More letters in the form of tentative values for reassessed properties will be sent out in March, as county citizens will learn how much their property values will be following the multi-year process. “Those [letters] are going to be sent out in two different batches; one on March 17 and one on March 24,” Fedeles said. “If anyone has any questions or disagreements with it–remember, this is only a tentative value–there’s going to be a process that you would be able to meet with Tyler Technologies, who’s the company that handles the reassessment.”

The next Commissioners’ work session is scheduled for March 1 at 10:00 AM.

File – Spectators watch fire works during the World Wrestling Entertainment “WWE” Crown Jewel matches at King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2019. WWE, an organization that is already king of the ring on social media, will attempt to expand its online presence this year with the $6.5 billion sports entertainment company talking about the possibility of putting itself up for sale. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

WWE, an organization that is already king of the ring on social media, will attempt to expand its online presence this year with the $6.5 billion sports entertainment company talking about the possibility of putting itself up for sale. WWE surpassed 20 million followers on its flagship TikTok account during its most recent quarter, the first sports league to do so, and is launching three international TikTok accounts after the WWE Español TikTok handle reached nearly 2 million followers in its first year. But the company’s presence online is broad. The company says its YouTube channel topped 92 million subscribers in the fourth quarter.

President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting with the leaders of the Bucharest Nine, a group of nine countries that make up the eastern flank of NATO, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, in Warsaw. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — President Joe Biden says Russian President Vladimir Putin made a “big mistake” by suspending his country’s participation in the the last remaining U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control treaty. In his first comments since Putin’s announcement Tuesday, Biden, who is in Poland to meet with NATO’s eastern flank allies, condemned the Russian decision to pull back from the treaty, known as New START. Biden spoke Wednesday in Warsaw as he was wrapping up his whirlwind, four-day visit to Poland and Ukraine.

This image provided by NASA and the European Space Agency shows images of six candidate massive galaxies, seen 500-800 million years after the Big Bang. One of the sources (bottom left) could contain as many stars as our present-day Milky Way, but is 30 times more compact (NASA via AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have discovered what appear to be massive galaxies dating back to within 600 million years of the Big Bang. The findings suggest the early universe may have had a stellar fast-track that produced these monster galaxies. While the new James Webb Space Telescope has spotted even older galaxies during its first year of work, it’s the size and maturity of these six apparent mega-galaxies that stun scientists. That’s because they expected to find little baby galaxies so close to the dawn of the universe, not these whoppers. They reported their findings Wednesday.