Ted Ritsick nominated for new Luzerne County division head position

Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo nominated Forty Fort resident Ted Ritsick to oversee the county’s new Community Planning and Economic Development Division at an annual salary of $98,000, according to Tuesday’s County Council agenda.

Majority council confirmation is required for division heads under the county’s home rule charter.

Crocamo said Friday she is compiling background information on Ritsick for public release on Monday.

Ritsick worked as a professional planner at the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and is employed as a consultant at Scranton-based Hailstone Economic.

He is familiar with county government through his work and because he served as an elected member of the county’s seven-member Government Study Commission, which drafted a proposed revised home rule charter placed on the November 2025 ballot.

While voters rejected the revised charter, Ritsick had said he hoped the commission’s document would “be able to guide Luzerne County to the solutions that it needs.”

Ritsick also had served on the county’s Wyoming Valley Airport Advisory Board and was a prior Forty Fort Borough councilman.

More recently, last month, Ritsick appeared before County Council as a consultant administrator and grant writer for the West Side Regional Police Department in its request for $300,000 in county funding.

The county allocation, which was approved, will be used to demolish the vacant former St. Anthony’s Church campus at Jackson and Pace streets in Larksville to make way for the future headquarters of the regional police department, which was activated at the start of this year to cover Larksville and Edwardsville boroughs.

A County Council majority voted to create the new Community Planning and Economic Development Division in February.

Crocamo has said the division would work with council to “recruit the right development for Luzerne County.” It was the first new division added since the January 2012 implementation of home rule, which created eight divisions.

The division head will be the only new position added as part of the new structure, Crocamo said. The confirmed nominee will oversee three existing departments with a combined 24 workers — Community Development, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, and GIS/Mapping, Planning and Zoning.

Tuesday’s council meeting is at 6 p.m. in the county courthouse on River Street in Wilkes-Barre. Instructions for the remote attendance option will be posted in council’s online meetings section at luzernecounty.org.