In her report to Northampton County Council May 21, county Executive Tara Zrinski said she is working across levels of government to find solutions that would keep the Northampton Senior Center open.

Last month, Northampton County announced the Northampton Borough and Lower Nazareth senior centers would close by month’s end, due to a reduction of nearly $400,000 in the county’s Area Agency on Aging budget.

The reduction stems from state budget cuts and federal legislation, Zrinski said.

“The state has informed us that in our 2027 budget allocation, the Area Agency on Aging allocation should be estimated at 2018-19 levels,” she explained.

Additionally, the county can no longer count on revenue from “desk reviews” that helped provide funding for senior centers, Zrinski said. She blamed federal legislation for this revenue loss.

“That means more of doing more with less,” Zrinski said.

According to Zrinski, seniors who use the Northampton Senior Center started what she termed a “geriatric riot” after the county announced the consolidation plan.

Zrinski met with the seniors and discussed possible solutions, she said. However, nothing has been decided.

“I am working with the Area Agency on Aging, Mayor Anthony Pristash from Northampton Borough, the Northampton Borough Council, Grace UCC Church and our state legislators to try to figure out some solutions so that we do not have to close Northampton or any other senior center,” Zrinski said.

One factor in the discussion is a 1991 county resolution that prevents the county from making overmatch of funding to children and youth, mental health, Area Agency on Aging and drug and alcohol programs, Zrinski said.

“You may have the opportunity to repeal that, if you want, to continue offering services to seniors,” Zrinski told the county council. “I would like to offer more services or at least the ones that we are currently offering to seniors at the level that our seniors need to maintain their health, their quality of life and well-being.”

Northampton County Council also heard a presentation at the meeting from Kim Barrow, vice chair of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, on data centers and their potential effect on electricity use.

Jeff Warren, council vice president, said he and other council members wanted Barrow to come and speak after they heard her presentation at a recent conference.

“We heard a presentation that (Councilman Jason) Boulette and I said was extremely sobering concerning power distribution and power generation as it pertains to data centers throughout Pennsylvania,” Warren said.

In her presentation, Barrow cited statistics from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab indicating that while data centers used 4.4 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption at the beginning of 2023, that number could jump to as much as 12% in 2028.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is part of a 14-state electric power market. Within that market, Pennsylvania is currently an exporter of power, Barrow said.

However, data centers are changing the math, she explained.

“We have always had data centers,” Barrow said. “They used to be 50, 100 or 200 megawatts. The hyperscale data centers that we are seeing apply everywhere, some of them are saying they need 1,000-2,000 megawatts of power. We are talking about data centers that can utilize the power output of a nuclear station, a large coal plant or a large natural gas plant.”

For example, Barrow noted, Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which is coming back online as part of a long-term contract with Microsoft, which is bringing its own data center power generation, creates approximately 1,000 megawatts.

Agreements like the one Microsoft reached are best, Barrow said, because it means the data center is bringing its own generation rather than taking from the existing power supply.

The cost of that supply has increased significantly, Barrow said.

“The price per megawatt day jumped 900 percent,” she said, noting a summer 2024 auction. “It went from $35 per megawatt day to $269 per megawatt day.”

Now, it is up to $333 per megawatt day and at the last auction, the 14-state region including Pennsylvania could not secure enough megawatts to meet their reliability goal.

“We need to temper the growth while the markets catch up, while generation gets built,” Barrow cautioned, adding they do not want to see these large users leaning on the residential and other smaller classes.

The commission’s goal is to spread the word and help local councils understand what is happening as data center requests occur, Barrow said.

In other news from the May 21 meeting, council unanimously approved a resolution “affirming protection for election workers from threats, intimidation, harassment and violence.”

The ordinance would extend protections that state law provides to certain election officials to all election officials, Boulette said.

“Current state law affords protections to the judge of elections, minority and majority inspector, machine inspector and the clerk within the polling place,” Boulette said. “There are no protections offered whatsoever to our county employees in our election division. There are no protections offered to any of the temporary or volunteer staff that county Executive Zrinski mentioned who just completed their duties in counting the ballots and performing their election responsibilities. There are no protections afforded whatsoever to our county board of elections.”

Council also unanimously approved a resolution supporting and urging passage of a state transit funding proposal from Gov. Josh Shapiro. The resolution cites potential cuts to LANTA (Lehigh and Northampton Transit Authority) service in the Nazareth and Slate Belt regions as concerns if a solution is not found.

Finally, county council also approved several contracts by a unanimous vote. They include a change order for A&E services for the government center parking garage replacement in the amount of $62,400 to Alloy5 Architecture of Bethlehem; electrical contracting services to Diefenderfer Electric LLC of Allentown in the amount of $2,067,675 over two years; general contracting on the government center parking deck replacement to Mohawk Group Inc. of Allentown in the amount of $11,525,500 over two years; heating, ventilating and air conditioning maintenance at the Northampton County Prison to NRG Controls LLC of Harrisburg in the amount of $123,904 over three years; mechanical contracting for the government center parking deck replacement contract to Warko Group of Allentown in the amount of $89,200 over two years; and plumbing contracting on the parking deck replacement project, also to Warko Group at a cost of $378,980 over two years.