First, let's start with the Zoning Hearing Board which ruled against the District's application for variance from two ordinances regarding total lot coverage and acceptable number of parking spaces. Below is a short excerpt from the article in the Almanac:
As for the board's next step, Kubit said, "We don't know just yet. We're still waiting on the written opinion from the zoning board and after that, we could, really I don't know and I hesitate to give an answer. We could appeal or change the design, that depends on legal counsel. We thought we had a very good case for requesting the variances."Right now the options for the District are as Mr. Kubit suggested. Either we can appeal to Common Pleas Court or we can change the design so that it does not violate the ordinances. Personally, I have made the comment that the Board must be made aware of potential costs of any and all remedies (appeal or optional redesigns) before we make a decision on where to take this next.
For more information regarding variances, please see this document on the Municipal website. It should give you some good insight into what the Zoning Hearing Board needs to see in order to grant a variance. I do look forward to reviewing the entire transcript of the meeting and reading the full decision of the Zoning Hearing Board. That written decision should be available within 45 days.
The second clip I want to link to has to do with the high school project and is a Letter to the Editor in this weeks Almanac. The letter is written by Mt Lebanon resident Dirk Taylor. Below is an excerpt:
The current $113 million plan would be totally irresponsible in any economic environment, let alone the current recession. It will break the record for most expensive public school project in western Pennsylvania history by more than $30 million. Each of our neighboring communities have completed major high school renovation/new construction projects in recent years with the highest cost coming in at under $38,000 per student. The reconstruction plan sought by Mt. Lebanon's School Board will "raise that bar" to a preposterous $55,000 per student. And to make matters even worse, the current design is greatly flawed.I urge you to read the entire letter as Mr. Taylor has been involved with the project quite intimately for some time. He was a member of the CAC and has done work for the District as a structural engineer. I point out this letter not because I want to revisit any of our past votes (you can review my blog for that), but because Mr. Taylor's sentiment on how this Board has acted is shared by a number of people in our community. There is a level of trust that is missing and must be rebuilt.
Speaking of trust that must be rebuilt, there has been recent discussion of Right to Know requests. There was an article in the Post-Gazette regarding some issues that Mt Lebanon has had with regards to requests. Please see the article here. Below are two short excerpts:
Under the new Right to Know law, signed by Gov. Ed Rendell on Feb. 14, 2008 and effective Jan. 1, 2009, the burden is on the government agency to explain why a document should not be released. The burden was formerly on the requester to explain why the information should be public.Really, that first paragraph is the important one. We are buying hardware in order for us to more easily comply with the Right to Know law signed in 2008. The hardware should reduce the time it takes to search for information requested from residents. According to our Director of Technology, other school districts in Allegheny County are also shelling out money to help them comply with the RTK changes from 2008.
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At this week's meeting, school board member Daniel Remely suggested the district make the names of the requestors and the costs of performing the requests available for public review.
I made two points on Monday night related to RTK requests. First, if the District wants to reduce the amount of RTK requests then it needs to have a focus on being as transparent as possible with all business before the Board. Decisions like ending a superintendent's contract without explanation, early bird teacher contracts, cost overruns on elementary school renovations, high school project reimbursement amounts reduced by 50% just weeks before Act 34 hearing, high school project costs less than 2% below referendum levels, and claims that 20-year enrollment figures were used to justify a HS project when such 20-year enrollment figures do not even exist, do not facilitate the kind of trust that the Board needs to have in order to reduce the amount of RTK requests. It is incumbent upon each board member and the administration to do what they can to keep the entire District on the correct open, honest, and transparent path. We have a pretty bad history and it is up to us to start to make changes. We must not view the RTK requests as nuisances but instead as opportunities to improve our communication with our residents.
The second point I made at the meeting was in relation to the comment made above by another board member. The only reason someone might want to publish the names and costs of RTK requests is if that person wanted to try to make people think twice about making those requests. If the Board was to follow this to its ultimate conclusion, then it would most likely have a "chilling effect" on people who would otherwise make a RTK request. This is not the type of District I want to be. My suggestion would be that if the Board makes the names and costs of requests public then it ought to make the information that was requested public as well. My hope would be that the empowerment felt by getting the information published online for all to see would neutralize the chilling effect mentioned earlier. Quite honestly, if the Board decided to move in the direction of publishing names and costs of RTK requests, I would most likely make this blog available to those residents that wish to publish the information gathered by their request.
There is no such thing as one-way transparency.
Thanks for reading.
James Fraasch
