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No masks, no taxes on tap for 2021

The Warren County School District is not expecting a tax increase nor masks for the 2021-2022 school year. Director of Business Services Jim Grosch presented budget information to the board during Monday night’s meeting. The proposed budget shows a deficit of $1.29 million without a tax increase. The maximum allowable increase — 2.3795 mills — would add a little over in $1 million in revenues and bring that deficit down to $272,373. The board approved a version of the motion with a zero-increase and asked administration to bring that version of the final budget to the special ...

No new COVID cases reported in county

There hasn’t been a new case of COVID-19 reported in Warren County this week. According to data Tuesday from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, there were zero new cases Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. There were four new cases reported on Thursday and three on Friday. The department is reporting a total of 2,630 cases in the county so far, with 2,107 confirmed and 613 probable. There have been 103 COVID-related deaths in the county. That number has not changed in two weeks. There were two COVID-positive patients at Warren General Hospital – neither in ICU nor on ...

Pennsylvania’s new unemployment claims system goes live

Pennsylvania's long-awaited overhaul of its unemployment claims filing system went live on Tuesday, with some users immediately complaining about glitches and the state agency that runs the program reporting a phone outage that temporarily prevented it from making or receiving calls. More than a year after the coronavirus pandemic swamped the state's old claims system, officials promised the replacement would be easy to use, both simplify and speed up the process of filing a claim, and incorporate features to reduce the opportunity for fraud. But people trying to migrate to the new ...

Lawmakers return for June with big agenda, sharp differences

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania state lawmakers are returning to session Monday with a big June agenda and sharp differences over the future of the state's finances, schools, energy sector and election procedures. With four weeks to wrap up work for an on-time budget, the ...

More than half of county adults have received first shots

More than half of Warren County adults are at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19. Warren County ended May and entered June on a positive note in terms of the pandemic. For the past five days, the report from the Pennsylvania Department of Health has added only three new cases of COVID-19 to the county’s total. There was one new case reported on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday, with no cases reported on Sunday nor Tuesday. There have been 2,623 cases in the county, with 2,015 confirmed and 608 probables. There were 120 new cases in May (about 3.9 per day) — about half ...

Jobless rate in April falls to 6.4%

Warren County’s employment rate took a step up in April. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, the county’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in April was 6.4 percent. That’s down from 7 percent in March and 7.4 percent in February. It’s last than half the unemployment from April 2020 when the rate was 13.2 percent. According to L&I, the county gained 1,400 jobs in the service sector from April 2020. The county rate is the lowest in the region and lower than the state average. Meadville had a 6.6 percent rate, then Bradford at 6.9 percent, Oil ...