John W. Olver: “Yes, the Belmont Complex does provide recreational opportunities and conference and meeting space. Yes, it is a facility…”

“Yes, the Belmont Complex does provide recreational opportunities and conference and meeting space. Yes, it is a facility that is used for Chamber of Commerce meetings, and banquets, and business, and seminars, and training and testing for displaced workers, and local union meetings and negotiations, emergency rescue training, voter registration drives, local business-to-business job fairs. In the county, Armstrong County in Pennsylvania, which is one of those in the northern part of Appalachia that is struggling hard, losing population, by the way, if I remember the map exactly correctly. I was from Pennsylvania in an earlier period of my lifetime. These are all purposes that are important to the process of keeping the economy going in that community and that county. But most important to this particular earmark is that a 2003 fire damaged much of the building, and these funds are needed to make continual interior and exterior renovations and to make the facility handicapped-accessible. Those are important specific things that go beyond the other bits and pieces that are pulled together in this complex.”