Photo by Joseph Bell
Elk County commissioner Daniel R. Freeburg, center, opens a bid package yesterday morning along with fellow commissioner Ronald T. Beimel, right, and June H. Sorg.

 Bid accepted to create the West Creek Wetlands Learning Center.

By Joseph Bell

Staff Writer

The West Creek Wetlands Learning Center in St. Marys will finally come to fruition with the acceptance of a bid yesterday morning from Allegheny Contracting.
“The bids are for building a pavilion, road, trail and parking lot in St. Marys for the West Creek Wetlands (Learning Center),” said Kim Lanich of the Elk County Conservation District.
The monetary allocation for the project originally stems from the county’s Growing Greener II funds.
“We were fortunate enough to have this money through a referendum, state-based money,” Elk County commissioner Daniel R. Freeburg said yesterday. “We gave it out to various applicants a few years ago so this is one of those projects, a very worthwhile project that has been a long time coming.
“We see a lot of community benefit coming from this, it’s educational.”
Of the four bids, Allegheny Contracting LLC out of Ridgway was low bidder with a schedule A total price of $57,402.87 and alternate No. 1 total price of $7,634.97.
“This is one of the projects that (Elk County Commissioner) June (Sorg) has been working on for years and years,” fellow commissioner Ronald T. Beimel said  concerning the project.
Commissioners also voted to approve a contract between the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Institute and Elk County with SAVIN (Contact-State Automated Victim Information Notification) effective for 2010.
“This is a program to protect the public,” Freeburg said. “It’s an information-type service and when prisoners are released, victims and associated individuals can be contacted and notified of that information.
“It’s been recommended by our prison administration and we’ve had this in place before.”
County officials also discussed an agreement regarding a county showcase.
“This is through our National Association of Counties (NACo) and we were selected to be one of the counties that are showcased,” Sorg said. “It would be a film presentation that would be linked to our (county government) Web site.
“It would have economic development, tourism, education, our local hospital would all be part of the presentation. We have to pull together a lot of ideas to send in but there’s no cost to the county and we’ll be one of the first to be showcased. They started with two nationwide, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, and why those two were picked, I don’t know, but we were one of the lucky ones to be chosen.”