State College Borough Councilman set to resign from position due to family move
Newly elected State College Borough Councilman Richard Biever, who took office in January, will step down from his position in June after announcing Friday that his family soon planned to move to Kansas.
Biever said he handed in his resignation Friday morning, and it’s expected to be formally accepted by council over the summer. He intends to remain on council until June 13, and he’ll move to Wichita, Kansas, sometime in July.
The longtime resident, who’s also a local business owner and an assistant teaching professor at Penn State, said his move wasn’t planned. He accepted a professorship at Wichita State University, and his wife Heidi accepted a position with Music Theatre Wichita.
“I appreciate that people trusted me to do this,” Biever told the CDT, referring to residents electing him to council. “And, even though I’ve only been in a short time, I’ve fully enjoyed every minute of my colleagues on the council, the staff of the borough, the manager of the borough — everyone’s been incredibly welcoming and considerate and wonderful.
“That, along with our business, along with just being in State College for 20 years, it’s just been an incredible experience. But if we were going to take this opportunity, now would have to be the time.”
It was not immediately known if borough council would fill Biever’s seat in the same manner it did when former Councilman Dan Murphy submitted his resignation in August 2020. But council is obligated to follow the home rule charter, which only requires it fill the vacancy by its own vote within 45 days of Biever leaving his seat. (If council does not meet that deadline, the Court of Common Pleas can assign someone.)
When Murphy resigned, council invited residents to submit applications to fill the seat before conducting brief interviews with applicants and then nominating replacements before a consensus was reached. Borough spokesperson Douglas Shontz said specifics on the process/application will be announced publicly at a future meeting.
Biever, founder and co-director of musical theater studio Singing Onstage, also intimated in a Facebook post that his local business wouldn’t close. In the post, the family said a former student was expected to take over the theater — in addition to purchasing their State College home. Biever told the CDT he expects to make a more formal announcement about Singing Onstage around May.
Two of his younger children will also be joining him and his wife in Wichita. His middle child plans to transfer from Penn State to Wichita State and his youngest, who’s a few months shy of high school graduation, intends to take a gap year and apply to Wichita State’s musical theater program.
“This wasn’t planned,” Biever told the CDT. “It was just kind of the circumstances and how it all came about was really interesting, with coming out of a pandemic and rethinking what I wanted do with my remaining active years here.
“It was really more about teaching and helping others to create theater than creating theater. So this opportunity came up, and it was really tough for many reasons — borough council being one of them — but just because of everything we’ve established in State College. But we also felt like we’ve done a lot here, and we both were looking for a new adventure.”
Biever first publicly announced the move Friday morning on Facebook. At the start of borough council’s work session at noon Friday, he also shared news of his departure.
“It’s been an amazing, eye-opening and wonderful experience,” he added at the work session.
