Timezone error

I have countdown timer version 3.0.5 installed. In this file fergcorp_countdownTimer.php we have had to comment out line 152 because it was changing the time of our wordpress edits to 5 hours in the past.

For example, if we edit a post, our edit would say ‘edited 5 hours ago’… it also changed the time for all other time-based plugins on our site.

However when commenting out that line, now the countdown plugin thinks that times in the future are actually 5 hours offset.

Our site is set to New York time zone.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/countdown-timer/