The merging of the Mars Volunteer Fire Department with the Valencia Volunteer Fire Department is moving foward despite opposition from some longtime members at Valencia. The objective of the merger is operating efficiencies such as cross training and cost savings through elimination of duplicate equipment.

At a recent meeting concerning the merger, a handful of people voiced opposition to the plan. The two fire departments had voted on Aug. 9 to proceed with the merger.

In Mars, the vote was 18 to 3, in favor of the merger. The vote at Valencia was less decisive, however, with 17 in favor and 13 opposed.

Most of the Valencia opposition apparently has come from life members who have not attended meetings about the merger and have not been active for a decade or more.

At Mars, only active members who had attended meetings within the past year, voted on the proposal.

A difference of opinion is to be respected, but opposition from people who have not attended meetings for more than a year and have not been involved in the fire department for a decade or so, is enough to warrant a Jeer.

Some of this opposition from the lifetime members might be based on their having felt slighted — or a failure of the fire department to adequately communicate to them the logic behind the merger plan. But, frankly, if the life members expect to be part of the process, they should remain active and attend meetings.

Even though the opponents are a minority, it would be good to have most everyone on board as the two departments look to combine operations. Now that the merger issue has brought these members back to the fire department, they might begin to see reasons to support the plan.

Adams Township supervisor Don Aiken is right to suggest that Valencia officials should sit down with active members and the less-active lifetimers to try to reach a more unified position.

Mars Mayor Dick Settlemire and Seven Fields borough manager Tom Smith both agreed that such mergers and other forms of shared services are the wave of the future because they increase efficiencies and save taxpayers money. And a unified force will help the merger succeed.

Not much can be said about AKSteel's plan to invest millions of dollars into improvements at its Butler plant because not much detail is known about the project. But any time a multimillion dollar investment is planned for a local manufacturer, that deserves a Cheer.AK Steel announced on Monday that it planned to invest $55 million in capital improvements between Butler and the company's operation in Zanesville, Ohio. The breakdown of how much money would be spent in each location has not yet been made public.The just-announced investment in Butler follows about $14 million spent earlier this year.The company has said that this second round of improvements at the plant in Butler Township will involve expanding the annealing process line at the Hill Top plant and a change to increase capacity in the electrical steel coating area elsewhere at the facility.The company projects that the demand for electrical steel made in Butler will be strong in both the short- and longer-term. According to AKspokesman, Alan McCoy, the Iraq War and natural disasters in the U.S., such as last year's damaging hurricanes, mean extensive reconstruction of electrical systems, which increases demand for the product made in Butler.The latest investments in the Butler operation are expected to be completed by mid-2008.

Some might argue that state Rep. Bill DeWeese, a Greene County Democrat, was only doing his job when he stuck a provision into a version of the slot machine gambling reform legislation that would grab slots-related development money from Fayette County and redirect it to Greene County.DeWeese, who serves as House Democractic Leader, inserted a narrowly targeted provision into the 141-page slots reform bill to shift half of the economic development money generated by Fayette County's share of 500-slot machines expected to be located at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort and Spa.DeWeese's carefully worded provision would impact no other gambling facility in the state in terms of sharing economic development funds with a neighboring county. His provision, which he also attempted to insert into the original slot machine legislation, was caught and removed by the state Senate both times.DeWeese argues that he is only trying to help his constituents in Greene County, but to do so with such a specifically targeted provision tucked into the fine print of a 141-page bill is not the kind of transparent, publicly debated lawmaking that voters want after the sneaky, middle-of-the-night pay raise-vote of 2005.If forcing casino operations to share development funds with neighboring counties is a good idea, why not write the provision in such a way that more than one county benefits?Public discussion of the idea?This narrowly targeted lawmaking is just the sort of thing to cause people to wonder what else is hidden in 141 pages of slot machine gambling reform.