Elizabethtown Borough Council members plan to urge state legislators to keep requiring legal notices in newspapers as they seek to help the town's own newspaper stay afloat.

At council's May 19 meeting, officials decided to send letters to members of the state Senate and House of Representatives to encourage them to oppose any bills that would no longer mandate those legal notices to be published in local newspapers. Several bills have been introduced that would require notices to be posted online only.

Council members discussed the matter after Dan Robrish, editor and publisher of The Elizabethtown Advocate, described how important legal notices are for his newspaper.

Robrish, who began his weekly newspaper in February 2010, said it would be "extraordinarily difficult" to turn a profit and continue publishing without income from legal notices.

Several council members said they like reading the Advocate and want to help it continue.

"We recognize what it is like to lose a paper in a small town," council member Meade Bierly said.

Elizabethtown had been without its own newspaper for about a year following the February 2009 closing of the Elizabethtown Chronicle after a bankruptcy filing by its owner, Journal Register Company.

Also, council cited Michael S. Lyons, an Elizabethtown Police Department officer who saved someone who went into cardiac arrest at home on Feb. 16. Lyons was the first person at the scene and used an automatic external defibrillator until more emergency responders arrived.

"This is a big deal," Chief Jack Mentzer said. "This is one human being saving the life of another human being."