[quantumfissure]

As a Pennsylvanian with a personal connection to the school district in the article, there are several things not mentioned that are critical to this conversation:

1. Tunhannock is in a prime area for Marcellus shale natural gas extraction. About 15 years ago, there was an extraction "boom." The town made a fortune off of it and took the town from very low income, PA "dump" to using it for massive improvements. Still not a booming town by any sense of the word, but much nicer then it was. Still a small population.

2. The town has a fortune in its coffers from the gas companies; employees; and other income related to above. In my opinion, they should use that for their solar, instead of getting a grant from the state that could be better used for solar in Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Lancaster; Allentown; or other densly-ish populated areas without large land available for solar/rooftop panels.

3. Tunkhannock is also outside a former major coal and manufacturing region, on the Susquehanna, about 45 mins from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Except for employees of Proctor and Gamble, it's a relatively poor population compared to most of the rest of the state. They hear "improvements to school district" they think "higher taxes." PA taxes, especially school taxes are quite high, with little payoff or bang for the buck. When you're small town blue-collar, earning an OK income and your property tax goes up 1 mill (the antiquated way PA calculates property tax), there's obvious pushback.

4. PA is Philadelphia in the East; Pittsburgh in the West; Lancaster/Harrisburg in the south and nothing else in the rest of the state. Except for it being mostly woods/forest, it's prime for solar, but we also already have lots of environmentally friendly ways of producing energy as it is: hydro-dams; nuclear; windfarms (as well as coal and natural gas). Our power is also pretty reliable, outside of ice storms, so it's a hard sell to people to want to give up anything else.

5. PA is slow moving in general. We have the second largest full-time legislature in the US (we're 7th in population, 33rd in size). There's a lot of logistics; committees; and procedure with that. Most of our power is in the Towns; Townships; Counties; State (in that order). Just because it seems to be held up now, is not unusual for us. We tend to do things in slow steps, instead of one big leap that freaks people out. Pot legalization is a good example. We started medically; and there's very recent bills being proposed to legalize. However, that didn't fly. What will end up happening is decriminalization then eventual legalization after a few years of that. Everything works that way in PA. We're slow-progressive, with a priority on small region rights. Except for liquor sales. That's stuck in 1929.

6. And last, the most important, and probably most obvious, PennDOT sucks.