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PLYMOUTH — Three Democrats — two incumbents and a newcomer — and an 18-year-old Republican are vying for three open seats on Plymouth Borough Council.
The Democrats are incumbents John Thomas and Bill Dixon and office seeker Adam Morehart.
The Republican is Alec Ryncavage, an entrepreneur who is hoping to become the lone GOP member of council.
Information about each follows below in alphabetical order.
Bill Dixon
Dixon has served on council for the past 7½ years and currently serves as vice president. Dixon has been a resident of Plymouth for 38 years and he is married to the former Janet Flynn, a lifelong borough resident. They have two children and three grandchildren.
An Army veteran, Dixon served with the 101st Airborne Division and 1st Infantry in the Vietnam War. After retiring from UGI Electric Division in 2014 after 28 years of employment, Dixon held numerous positions in the company from working at the generation plant to lab technician to substation maintenance.
Dixon has been active in youth sports organizations for 32 years in either coaching, leadership, or fundraising activities for intramural, mini football, girls softball and Little League. He was instrumental in obtaining the funding and installation of the lights at the Little League field and he formed the first chapter of Babe Ruth Softball in Plymouth in 2003. He has been an active member of Plymouth Alive for 12 years, liaison for council for the Recreation Board, and a life member of the Plymouth Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1425.
“I pledge to continue to emphasize my prior current term goals of controlling spending (regular review of all financials), increased police presence (added three full-time officers) and promote transparency and continue to promote accountability from all officials,” Dixon said. “My No. 1 priority is public safety with continued improvement to police and fire services. I will continue to work to demolish blighted and unsafe structures and at the same time work with council and community on the revitalization of our town, moving it forward in a positive direction.”
As a representative on the Council for the South Valley Council of Government, Dixon said he will continue to find ways to obtain equipment and paving opportunities in addition to the normal grant process.
Dixon said he oversees the public works department, ensuring that scheduling is aligned and that concerns and complaints of residents are addressed in a timely manner and will work to ensure that the flood control structures are maintained.
“I pledge to continue to improve the quality of life for our residents and welcome any resident’s questions or inquiries regarding my future plans for our borough,” Dixon said.
Adam Morehart
Morehart, 50, is a 1987 graduate of Williamsport Area High School. Later, he attended Williamsport Area Community College and studied communications and design. After college he went to work for his family’s commercial printing business, moving to Northeastern Pennsylvania as a result of a work promotion in 1997. Morehart relocated with his family to Plymouth in 2009. He has two daughters, three sons and three grandchildren.
Since moving to Plymouth, Morehart said he has been active in attending council meetings as well as working with other citizens’ organizations to make improvements to the town. He is an auxiliary member of Plymouth VFW Post 1425. He has served as president of the Plymouth Citizens Action Committee, in addition to being a member of other activist groups in town.
“Together the members of these groups set political differences aside to become a positive force in helping to redirect and affect change in the borough,” Morehart said. “As a leader of these groups, we assisted council in forming some of the current ordinances that benefit the town to this day.”
Morehart said he has a deep passion for making Plymouth a better community.
“Leading the borough toward progress and change has been a desire of mine since I moved to our town and I’m confident that I will make voters proud and continue to make a difference for all of us,” Morehart said. “To that end, I volunteered and am currently serving on the Plymouth revitalization steering committee. That project is going incredibly well and I’m really looking forward to the next few years as we rediscover and reinvigorate Plymouth together.”
If elected, Morehart said he will continue to work progressively with council and administrative staff. He said progress has over the last several years includes: the procurement of roughly $1.5 million in grant awards, growing the size of and improving the police force, the continuing demolition on many blighted and unsafe structures in the borough, the repavement of many streets, constant partnership and work on maintaining flood control structures with the Army Corps of Engineers, repairing 10 to 12 street drains a year to improve our ability to handle run off, and budgeting for preventative means such as replacement of our aging fire trucks and other equipment.
Morehart said Plymouth needs to continue to progress to meet the needs of an evolving community.
“I truly believe Plymouth is a great town with a proud past and a promising future,” Morehart said. “I will not promise the citizens anything other than the fact that I will give you and our town 110% all the time. I will make it a priority to advocate for our police, fire and first responders and provide them the funding and respect they need to make us safe.”
Alec Ryncavage
Ryncavage was doing media interviews and running his own tech startup before he walked into Wyoming Valley West High School as a freshman in 2015.
Fast forward to 2019: Ryncavage is a newly minted WVW graduate. The antivirus device he created is at the heart of AR Holdings Inc. and Cybiot, the companies which grew out of his seventh grade efforts and of which he is the CEO.
Ryncavage, who is taking a gap year after graduation, has kept plenty busy with those businesses as well as with freelance political consulting, which included designing websites for campaigns.
Now, the young Republican is seeking elected office himself, in heavily Democratic Plymouth, after running as the only GOP candidate for council in May’s primary. He relishes the challenge.
“My parents are Democrats, my grandparents are Democrats, everybody’s a Democrat,” said Ryncavage.
“I was told I could be the second coming of Christ if I just registered as a Democrat. If I was looking for a resume boost, for the easy win, I could have registered as a Democrat,” he said.
“When it comes to taxes and business, I side with the Republican Party. Now, I’m a moderate Republican. I’m willing to cross the aisle, and a majority of my support in Plymouth is from Democrats. I can’t get elected solely by the Republicans in Plymouth, there’s not enough of them,” he added.
Ryncavage said he is interested in local government because it affects people most closely. He wants to see Plymouth become a place where young people stay — or return to — after their education.
He agrees that revitalizing Main Street is important, but said it is not the only issue.
“Main Street’s only one part of the problem in Plymouth. We have to figure out how to make the entire community more attractive and we have to market the area,” Ryncavage said.
He supports efforts to revitalize the community that have been facilitated by the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, which has been holding a series of public meetings — the final two are Nov. 4, and Dec. 2.
Ryncavage said he has worked with PDC Executive Director Julie Fitzpatrick to learn more about the process, and what other communities are doing, and hopes that the local effort will not end once PDC finishes its meetings and presents its findings.
“If we increase the level of pride in this town, other things will start to follow,” said Ryncavage, who said he also favors an under-18 curfew and more strict enforcement of code violations, adding that he feels such steps haven’t been taken “because everyone is afraid of being sued.”
John Thomas
Thomas brings with him a lifetime of public service. He served on the Plymouth Borough Police Department for decades, rising from patrolman to police chief. During his tenure as police chief he had the honor of being named first president of the Mid-Valley Drug Task Force, which included 30 municipal police departments, including Wilkes-Barre City. The narcotics unit made countless arrests and aided in successful prosecutions.
Thomas retired from the police department in 1998 and then entered the field of private security and investigations. He was security supervisor at Techneglas until the Jenkins Township plant closed in 2005. Besides his five-year stint on Plymouth council, Thomas also served as the town’s Code Enforcement Officer from 2006 to 2014.
Thomas was educated at Wyoming Valley West High School, Luzerne County Community College, Wilkes University and police training schools under the auspices of the FBI, Pennsylvania State Police, and the state Attorney General.
His affiliations include Plymouth Lodge 331, F&AM; Irem, Dallas; Notre Dame Club of Wyoming Valley; Susquehanna River Watch Coalition; Wyoming Valley Lodge 36, Fraternal Order of Police, and Luzerne County Chiefs of Police Association, of which he was a past president.
Thomas and his running mates, Bill Dixon and Adam Morehart, have pledged to improve the quality of life for Plymouth Residents.
“Public safety is our No. 1 priority,” Thomas said. “This includes police and fire services, demolition of blighted and unsafe structures, repaving of streets, and maintaining flood control structures.