I planned to write something about newly announced programs from the county, but Chester Matters already has a nice piece about them, so go read it! One program provides funds for summer camp for children of unemployed residents seeking work. The other program provides funds to small businesses to provide incentives to new hires.

One other program I recently came across in Rep. Kreuger’s email is the Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program for seniors. The income requirements are low – this is a program for low income seniors. But if you know any low income seniors in need of fresh vegetables, here’s one of the providers. That page lists others in the county participating in the program too.

If you haven’t signed up for our state legislators’ email lists, they provide a good deal of locally useful information. Rep. Krueger’s last email had an update on the gas spill in Brookhaven for instance. You can sign up for their email lists on their governmental pages (signup is near the bottom), Rep. Krueger’s is here and Sen. Kane’s is here.

In less helpful governmental news, this afternoon there was a meeting with the consultants advising the county on the creation of the new county health department regarding environmental health. The planned timeline was dispiriting. The county’s timeline doesn’t have the new health department doing much of anything on environmental health – matters like lead hazard control and air quality improvement – until 2023. Prior to 2023 they’re collecting data – and by that they seem to primarily mean gathering what already exists not generating new data. So by the time our county candidates will be running for re-election in 2023, all they’ll have to show for their efforts to create a health department is a shiny new bureaucracy that’s replaced existing state health infrastructure with a county department.

It all brings to mind a Tom Chapin classic, “A study’s about to begin…”