The situation is even worse than you think. With the latest bid opening, the amount that the taxpayers will be paying for the Community Center building is now about $3,500,000.

COMMUNITY CENTER UPDATE

At the O'Hara Township Council's special meeting last night (July 15, 2014), bids for the site preparation and landscaping were opened.  This part of the total package had to be rebid because the first request for quote did not include some vital items.  The result of this bid opening increased the total cost by about $450,000 to $9,195,648.  At last report (6/30/14), $7,656,093 had been raised.
For the moment, this raises the required contribution from the taxpayers to a total of $3,539,553.
Again, to put this in perspective, total property tax receipts for the entire township is $2,072,672 per year.
I believe that this is intolerable.  Council cannot and must not commit the taxpayers to this unnecessary use of tax dollars.  We must use our scarce resources to take care of those items that are required, such as road repair and park upkeep.  In addition, we are required by the County to build a new sewage pumping station in the Saxonburg Blvd. area next year.  This will cost somewhere between $3 & $5 million.  If the Community Center is built, it is almost a sure thing that taxes will be raised.

Tom Portante

Community Center

Fellow O’Hara Resident,

 

First, allow me introduce myself.  I am Tom Portante and I’ve been a resident of O’Hara Township for over 20 years.  I’ve been regularly attending Council meetings since this issue has risen and I wanted to take this opportunity to bring something important to your attention.  All of the information below is public information gathered at Township Council meetings, publicly available documents on the O’Hara Township website, from previous Council meeting minutes, and articles from The Herald on the proposed O’Hara Township Community Center.

 

Below is the background information and current issues regarding the Community Center:

 

1)      The not-for-profit group, Community Center Association, has been operating the existing Community Center since the 1980s.  The current facility, located at 1220 Powers Run Road, has reached the end of its useful life.  Since the early 2000s, plans to build a new community center have been discussed.

 

2)      At some point in the late 2000s, the Community Center Association and O’Hara Township Council decided to move forward with building a new community center.  The arrangement would involve O’Hara Township donating one million dollars (set aside in 2004) and the Community Center Association would then raise the rest of the funds through private donations.

3)      The CCA and Council had set 2014-2015 as the period in which a new center needed to be built.

 

4)      In September of 2013, the Community Center Association asked Council for more public dollars to be committed to the fundraising effort.  Council, out of their cash reserves, offered a matching million dollar donation.  That is to say, O’Hara Township would match each dollar the Community Center Association raised, up to a million dollars.  The Community Center Association reached the matching million sometime in late spring 2014.  At this point, O’Hara Township has committed two million dollars to the project.  (The matching million and the original million set aside in 2004)

 

5)      While the fundraising was on-going, the design plans for the building were continually being revised.  There were several public hearings to show the design plans for the new building.  Again, no firm costs were developed for these plans, just estimates.  Several professional construction experts reviewed the plans and determined that the cash raised was wholly inadequate for this design.  As a result, plans were scaled back.

 

6)      All of the above happened without a firm handle on the amount of money required to build the desired building.  That is to say, the scaled back building didn’t necessarily match the amount of funds raised to that point.

7)      The Community Center Association finalized the building design sometime around March and O’Hara Township Council put the project out to bid that same month.

 

8)      The base bid for the building came in at $6,733,235.  This is only for the building and does not include any of the potential add-ons (more stage space for Stage Right, lighting, geo heating, etc), or any overages that are common when constructing a new building.

 

9)      O’Hara Township Council, hoping to cut costs, put the paving and site work jobs out for rebid in May. Those bids will be opened at the July 15^th, 2014 meeting.  At the moment, CCA is still short anywhere between $500,000 and $1,300,000.  I’m awaiting a Freedom of Information Request release of information from the Township for the actual numbers. The numbers I have provided are ones that have been discussed at Council meetings by representatives of the Community Center Association, O’Hara Township Council members, and printed in The Herald.

 

10)  As it stands now, the taxpayers of O’Hara Township will be paying at least $2,000,000.00 towards the construction of the new building, and possibly as much as $3,000,000+.  In under one year, the O’Hara Township’s obligations to the Community Center went from $1,000,000.00 to potentially $3,000,000.00+.  To put this amount into perspective, the entire tax receipts to O’Hara Township for every property in the Township, including all residential, commercial, and industrial property (including all of RIDC Park) is $2,072,672 per year. 

 

11)  Because the site bids need to be accepted within 60 days of being opened, O’Hara Township Council must vote to accept or reject the bids by August 20^th, 2014.  The last council meeting before the 20^th is August 12^th, 2014. That means the Council will vote on this August 12^th, 2014.

 

12)  The legalities of the situation is that once any one of the six contracts from these bids is accepted by O’Hara Township, the taxpayers will be obligated to continue funding all construction expenses of the Community Center building. (The primary reason is the land was provisionally given to O’Hara Twp. by the Fox Chapel School District.)

 

13)  In addition to the capital costs, O’Hara Township annually subsidizes CCA with a grant of $120,000 per year.

The second part of the issue is the taxpayer finances. If the Township is forced to contribute more than the $2,000,000.00 already committed, it will likely have to raise tax/fee revenue to cover any potential future shortfalls. Also on the horizon is a mandatory Sanitary Sewer project along Saxonburg Blvd.  The estimated cost of that Sanity Sewer project is $3 to $5 million.  The township will have to issue a bond to pay for the sewer project. In addition, should the taxpayers of O’Hara give more money to the Community Center project, we likely won’t have the cash reserves to cover unforeseen events in the Township. Emergency road repairs, hillside collapses, major sewer breaks, bridge failures, major floods (as happens in the early 2000s), and harsh winters could force the township to borrow even more money to cover the costs of repair/rebuilding after those events as well as limit any future road paving efforts.

 

In summation, the O’Hara Township council will be debating whether or not to give the Community Center Association more taxpayer money (assuming they have not successfully fundraised enough to cover the construction costs) at the August 5^th, 2014 and August 12^th, 2014 meetings.  Both meetings at the O’Hara Township Municipal building located at 325 Fox Chapel Road, are on Tuesday and begin at 7:00pm. If you have any interest in this project, what is being done with your tax dollars, or the possible consequences of committing more taxpayer funds to this project, please attend both of these meetings. It will be the last chance for O’Hara residents to voice their opinions on this matter before it is voted on by Council. 

 

If you cannot attend the meetings, you can always e-mail or call your representative on Council. Their contact information is listed below. Whether you support, oppose, or simply have questions about the Community Center project and O’Hara Townships financial commitments to its construction, the time to ask is before the August 12^th, 2014 meeting. After that, it will be too late and our Township will be saddled with the consequences of Council’s decision for decades to come.

 

Contact Information of O’Hara Township Council:

First Ward:       Charles A. Vogel         CVogel@ohara.pa.us           412-828-7535

Second Ward: Mark F. Rothert           MRothert@ohara.pa.us       412-963-7131

Third Ward:     Scott Frankowski         SFrankowski@ohara.pa.us 412-781-4436

Fourth Ward:   Allison Garcia             AGarcia@ohara.pa.us          412-772-1695

Fifth Ward:      Cassandra Eccles         CEccles@ohara.pa.us          412-828-9664

At-Large:         Robert John Smith       RSmith@ohara.pa.us           412-967-0629

At-Large:         Bart Bodkin                 BBodkin@ohara.pa.us         412-203-3503

 

If you’d like to contact me to ask any questions, or to speak to your group, my information is below.

 

Tom Portante, 204 Margery Drive, Ward 1, District 1, Pittsburgh, Pa 15238-3008

E-mail:  tportante@comcast.net  Phone: (412) 781-3958   Cell: (412) 491-0828   Fax: (412) 781-0902