Rayburn Township Man Honored After 38 Years of Service

Rayburn Township Supervisors Jeff Livengood, Randy Slease, and Sam Duncan present 38-year township worker Tom Painter with a plaque officially dedicating the new addition to the Rayburn Township Municipal Building in his honor.
by Nathan Lasher
Rayburn Township Supervisors Jeff Livengood, Sam Duncan, and Randy Slease dedicated a newly-built addition of the Rayburn Township Municipal Building to 38-year township worker Tom Painter during a Supervisors’ meeting held yesterday evening.
“I think it’s just great,” said Painter in a telephone interview following the meeting. “I’ve worked all of these years and tried to do the best that I could, and this is a great honor for me. There are a lot of wonderful people out there.”
Painter has been working for Rayburn Township for 38 years. Many of those years were spent as a Township Supervisor.
“Whenever I first started, I was going to quit about the second or third day I was on the job site,” said Painter. “I was very young, I didn’t know anything, and at that particular time we just had one truck and an old tractor with a bucket on it. It was just pretty rough. Through the years we’ve gotten better equipment and the people have gotten change for the better. We’ve gotten them water, sewage, and cable. So, it’s really progressed. We’d like to have more water through the Township, but it’s awfully hard this day in age to get any grants or anything because money is tight. It’s an interesting job. Sometimes you’d like to go out and scream, but you have to stick with it. We’ve always found that if you get out there and try to do what the people ask you to do or try to fix their problems, then they’ll work with you. ”
When asked if he had any good stories he wanted to share from his nearly four decades of service, Painter replied, “There have been several good stories, but I don’t think you’d want to print them. So, we’ll just skip that.”
Although Painter is no longer a Supervisor, he is still working for Rayburn Township by filling the position of Road Master.
Current Rayburn Township Supervisor Sam Duncan had a few comments after the meeting regarding the dedication. “Thirty-eight years is a long time to dedicate to your community,” said Duncan.”He helped this township tremendously over the years, and naming that addition after him was the least we could do.”
According to Duncan, the bid for the new addition for the building came in at $39,000. “We didn’t have to raise taxes or anything,” he said. “We had money set aside because we were at the point where it was either update that old, worn out trailer that we got from the Armstrong School District back when Spaces Corners School was open or build the new addition. The trailer was getting to be in pretty sad shape; in the wintertime you froze, and in the summertime you roasted. It was almost to the point where we could have dumped an endless supply of money into it and we would still have an old, worn out trailer.”
The new addition of the Rayburn Township Municipal Building has been under construction since the beginning of December, 2009. Citizens can feel free to stop by and check it out during one of the Rayburn Township Supervisors’ Meetings which take place the first Monday of every month at 6PM.