By Karen Blackledge
DANVILLE -- Montour County commissioners Chairman Harold Hurst will be embarking on a new profession come early January.
After serving eight years as a commissioner, he will be selling real estate.
The commissioners' chairman the past four years, he has undergone real estate training at Villager Realty Inc. and passed the test to obtain his real estate license.
"I had my first showing on Monday," the 58-year-old Cooper Township resident said.
With Villager, he plans to develop a rather unique specialty in farms, farmettes and open land. He has background in farming and owned Tri-County Farm and Home Supply in Jerseytown for 31 years.
He said he thoroughly enjoyed county government.
"The uniqueness of county government presents challenges. You have row officers elected like we are with the commissioners responsible for the finances of the whole operation," he said.
Mr. Hurst found politics the most difficult aspect of the job to deal with. "It motivates people to act or react in certain ways and makes it difficult to do their jobs sometimes instead of keeping their minds focused on what needs to be done," he said. "As a whole, Montour politics is a low level."
When he leaves office on Jan. 7, he will miss the people he worked with. "The row officers and employees are very sensitive to the budget and do a wonderful job in maximizing the money at the least cost to operate an office," he said.
The former SEDA-Council of Governments chairman is proud of a number of accomplishments as commissioner.
They include the establishment of a county recreation commission, a comprehensive park, recreation and open space plan, expanding the Danville Airport with a state aviation grant, renovating the Montour Preserve environmental education center with state funds, upgrading the courthouse, including a new roof and repairs to the cupola, upgrading county maintenance vehicles, approving the hotel room rental tax paid by visitors to the county that is used to promote tourism, a program removing old tires at no cost to the county, flood mitigation projects to protect Danville properties and beginning a first-time home-buyers program.
Other accomplishments include the first reassessment in about 50 years, enacting the Clean & Green Program to preserve farmland and open space, selling county land to Sheetz to create jobs and expand tax rolls, negotiating for free high-speed Internet by trading county tower space to the communication company, creating a county Web site, upgrading technology in county offices, implementing a new voting system, purchasing a gateway property from the state Department of Transportation for courthouse parking, selling the old county barn, providing a prescription drug discount card program for residents, replacing a bridge behind the Texas Two-Step and updating the 911 center.
A former Cooper Township supervisors chairman and former Montour County Planning Commission chairman, Mr. Hurst negotiated with Geisinger Medical Center to lower charges by 55 percent for medical services for county prisoners, resulting in the savings of thousands of dollars.
n E-mail comments about this article to kblackledge@dailyitem.com.
