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 15th, 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 20th, 2014. The last council meeting before the 20th
is August 12th, 2014. That
means the Council will vote on this August 12th, 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 5th,
2014 and August 12th, 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 12th, 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
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
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