BELLEFONTE — During this week’s Centre County Commissioners meeting, Bryce Taylor attended to speak about the challenges the Milesburg Borough Council has been facing.

Taylor attended as a resident of Milesburg to discuss his concerns following a letter he’d submitted to the commissioners a week prior.

“Our borough government at this point is not functional. There’s a lot of us in the community that are at this point really looking for answers, and answers are not coming,” said Taylor.

According to Taylor, he’s reached out to representatives in Harrisburg and also other local agencies.

“We’re in this weird twilight zone where on the books we have six council members — one has resigned, we have a vacancy — but in practice there’s not even a quorum to hold a meeting,” said Taylor.

The Milesburg Borough council has had numerous meetings already this year.

During their meeting on March 11, council discussed how to replace a member who had previously resigned when then-President Samantha Walker submitted her resignation and forced the meeting to end for lack of a quorum.

In a written statement to The Express, Walker said she resigned to stop quick action in filling Dieterle’s position.

“I prepared to sacrifice myself to stop them — my lawfully gained elected position, my honest passion to serve and all of the ideas that are still burning inside me,” Walker said of her decision to resign.

The borough has until April 19 to fill this vacancy.

“We have reached a point now where we’re looking for answers,” said Taylor, “… to come up here and stand before you to say there is no solution other than to hire a lawyer and take them to court is hard for me to do. That is a last resort, but I really feel that we’re at that last resort.”

Taylor noted that he is planning to go from agency to agency until he can find someone to help the residents of the community represent themselves against the borough.

“It doesn’t seem like there is any way that the borough is going to pull this together and fix this from inside, out. It’s not even clear that we’re going to have another meeting … If we allow things to go on the present track, it will take months for this to work itself using the mechanisms that are in borough code or in the Sunshine Act,” said Taylor.

According to Taylor, no one really knows what to do. He noted that he feels they need to inspire an outside agency to step in and look at the situation.

“In three months we haven’t yet been able to get anybody to step in and take a look at the situation,” said Taylor.

The Centre County Commissioners could not offer much in response to the public comment, but did their best to offer what advice they could.

“We appreciate your concern, and we see you’re definitely a concerned citizen of Milesburg Borough. Pennsylvania is a Commonwealth, power is very, very widely shared. Thankfully you’ve already done enough research to see, based on the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the commissioners are not able to intervene in any way directly,” said Board Chair Mark Higgins.

Higgins was able to suggest a possible avenue for when Taylor speaks to a lawyer regarding a court order from the 1800s.

“We’ve had this problem going back to the founding of the country, Bryce. I believe there is something called the Writ of Mandamus which dates back to the early 1800s where some elected officials were not performing their duties,” said Higgins.

Taylor said that he has already spoken with a lawyer.

“I have talked with the district attorney. The problem is that they’re all saying, ‘sorry, can’t help.’ It’s not a question of having good arguments, we have good arguments. The problem is money. We’re not a wealthy community… nobody in our community can afford tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees,” said Taylor.

Taylor said that he plans to get in touch with non-partisan non-profits, state agencies and more. The action is dead in the water, according to Taylor, if there is no help.

“I’m not giving up. The system is not set up to help us… the residents of my community need help, and I’m rapidly running out of places to go to ask for it,” said Taylor. “We’re getting to the end of the line. This is going to go on for months and months, and we’re going to watch a government failing in real time. Our town is being torn apart by this.”

Later in the meeting, the following question was asked, “If the county has questions about money allocated in any township, municipality, the county doesn’t have the power to call for an audit? Is that how it works?”

The county solicitor was not in attendance, so the question could not have an official answer, but it was speculated that the county itself does not have the authority to call for an audit.

“My first thought would be (for) the District Attorney’s office to see if there is a case of criminal investigation,” said county Administrator John Franek, Jr.

“I think there’s also a conversation that maybe can be had at the State Auditor General’s Office, that might be the next step on the train. I would think the residents would be better served to have that conversation initially,” said Commissioner Steven Dershem.