CENTRALIA - The borough council meeting started promptly at 6 p.m.
It ended at 6:10 p.m.
Two council members and the mayor chatted about the weather before getting down to their short agenda: paying one bill and looking over two others.
Mayor Carl Womer and borough council members Bonnie Hynoski, Ann Frankel and Helen Tanis oversee the official business of Centralia Borough Council, representing the nine residents who remain in the municipality. Hynoski and Frankel were the voting members present at the February meeting.
"We don't do much during our meeting, but we do what we need to do to keep it going," Hynoski said. "We are a regular borough council and meet as such."
The council has advertised meetings for the remainder of the year, despite troubles residents face in their attempt to continue living in the borough.
Borough council members run their meetings like any other council: Looking over the minutes and discussing new and old business. They were a bit surprised to see a reporter at Monday night's meeting. In fact, they had to unlock the meeting room door to allow the reporter access.
Board members were a little gun-shy about the reporter's intentions. "You have to understand, its nothing against you," Hynoski said. "We've been raked over the coals so long, it gets annoying."
'We're still here'
Centralia's population has dwindled from more than 1,000 residents in the 1980's to fewer than 10 people as result of a mine fire that began burning in 1962.
"We hear it all the time, how Centralia is an abandoned mine-fire-ravaged town," Womer said. "The fire has moved and we are still here, so it's not abandoned."
Despite the low population, Centralia remains a borough in the eyes of the state and a member of the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs.
"Centralia Borough was founded prior to 1992, so there is no minimum population number needed to qualify a municipality as a borough," said Shelly Hauck, research associate for the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs. "Today, if you wanted to start a borough, you need a population of 500 people."
Hauck said Centralia is a member in good standing with the association and has the smallest population as a borough in the state.
"With only nine people, they are the smallest borough, population wise," she said. "S.N.P.J., a fraternal community in Lawrence County that was founded in 1977, has just a few more, as does New Morgan in Berks County."
All that doesn't matter to Centralia's leaders, who continue to operate the borough the best they can. Among the bills received in the past month, the highest one was $92 from PPL Electric Utilities.
"That one was due to the Christmas lights we had in town," Hynoski said. "Someone did send us a $50 donation to help with the cost."
Council did not say how the donation would help with expenses and the borough's budget, only saying that the borough's budget is "in the black."
"We all want to keep the town going and we get along. We know what needs to be done and we get it done," Hynoski said. "If many of the other councils handled business the same way, they might not have many of the problems they do currently." BLOOMSBURG - A court verdict found that a retired Centralia couple's home is worth $23,500 more than a private appraiser, hired by the couple, determined, but the pair are not sure if it's enough to enable them to move from their home.
The Press-Enterprise reported Saturday that Columbia County President Judge Thomas A. James Jr. ruled Feb. 4 that the couple, John and Arlene Lokitis, of 314 Park St., should be awarded a fair-market price of $116,500 for their six-room home, which has been modified with improvements since being built in 1979. The judge's ruling is $23,500 higher than the private appraisal of $93,000.
The judge also awarded the couple $22,500 in relocation expenses or the cost of replacement housing, $1,790 in moving fees and $500 for the appraiser's fees.
A government appraisal, done in 1993, put the home's value at $72,000, plus $1,000 for the lot it sits on.
John Lokitis told the newspaper he wasn't sure if the amount was high enough for the couple to move, saying it might cost him $150,000 to relocate somewhere else.