Looking Back, Moving Ahead in Sewickley

“We are a solid, solid Council. We make great decisions in this borough. We are fortunate to live in a borough like Sewickley Borough. We should be holding each other’s hands – I don’t care what your political party is. Our agenda should be the same – make this place the safest and funnest place for our children and our grandchildren to grow up in. That has always been my goal. That’s all I’ll say. We’ll move on.”

– Sewickley Council President Jeff Neff, during the virtual meeting of Council on May 12, 2020.

Despite the cries of indignation from many on social media in the wake of the Jeff Neff photo controversy, I thought from the onset that he would not be removed from his position as Sewickley Council President, even with the close vote along party lines.

While the May 1 virtual special meeting was lively and well-attended, the decision to retain Mr. Neff spoke to the consensus that I felt was building once the initial wave of shock and disbelief gave way to more reasoned review and reflection.

Along with the published meeting minutes, the video of the proceedings (since deleted from the borough website) also included a good chunk of chat comments posted while the proceedings were underway. Although the comments for only the first two hours of the three hour, forty minute meeting were saved, some of them were revealing and astute –

“Turk” – As a Sewickley resident, this is a distraction. This will have little impact on the business district or our community going forward. By Memorial Day- people dont even talk about this by end of summer -no one remembers.

“Donna Korczyk” – I wish people would stop making this about Jeff Neff’s character. I believe it is about taking responsibility for one’s actions. When an action that one has taken seriously affects their ability to effectively do their job, then resigning is the responsible action to take

“Clark Webb” – Jeff seems like a nice guy. I delivered his mail and he was personable and nice to me. I don’t question his character, but based on his actions I do question his judgement, and do think he is more focused on his campaign and not protecting and serving Sewickley.

Like Mr. Webb, I admire Mr. Neff’s achievements and reputation for integrity, and accept his contrition for the photo debacle as genuine. I do not agree with some of Mr. Neff’s beliefs as stated on his senate campaign website – especially with regard to energy development.

Map showing results of 37th Senate District Republican Primary. Areas in green won by Devlin Robinson, areas in blue won by Jeff Neff. – Allegheny County Dept. of Elections

I stated in my last post that support for Mr. Neff’s campaign appeared to be focused in the Quaker Valley communities and surrounding areas, and that opponent Devlin Robinson’s familiarity to a larger electorate in his native South Hills, along with the County GOP endorsement, might be too much for Mr. Neff to overcome.

The above map, and associated unofficial results, appear to bear out those observations.

With Mr. Neff’s campaign at its apparent end, I believe that serving the citizens of Sewickley has been and remains his “first, best destiny“. This is true even if his tenure as a member of Council has seen some challenging times and some curious decisions – some that stretch the definition of “great” for myself and others.

Here are some examples.

Zamagias Condos rise above Blackburn Avenue – May 24, 2020.

1. The questionable handling of the approval process for the Zamagias Condominiums in 2016, and the equally questionable conduct of the public hearing for the project’s approval by Council. This resulted in an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the validity of the hearing under the Pa. Sunshine Act.

2. Doing away with the Committee of the Whole in 2017, thus cutting publicly accessible Council proceedings by half.

On a related note, a review of meeting minutes for the eleven Quaker Valley municipalities appears to show that Sewickley is one of only three towns that do not utilize standing committees to divide responsibilities for oversight and review. The other two that don’t are considerably smaller – Sewickley Hills, and teeny tiny Haysville.

3. The 2017-2018 mishandling of zoning and code enforcement associated with the Minas LLC development on Hill and Hopkins Streets. This appeared to culminate with the retirement of the borough official with responsibility over these areas, and also exposed a decided lack of transparency with regard to the activity of the Zoning Hearing Board.

Partially completed “accessory structure” in rear of 922 Beaver Street.

Things were looking up in this area after the hiring of Erin Sakalik as Assistant Borough Manager, along with Manager Marla Marcinko. Among Ms. Sakalik’s reported duties were oversight of code enforcement, zoning, and building inspection.

This included acting as a liaison with personnel employed by Harshman CE Group, retained by Council to provide the day-to-day enforcement and inspection activities that appeared to be lacking in recent years.

Regardless of the exact reasons why, the alarmingly short tenure of Ms. Sakalik is remarkable for the wrench her departure appeared to throw into what appeared at first to be a well-intentioned attempt to assure continuity in daily oversight.

4. The most recent evidence of this involves the construction of an accessory structure within the borough’s Historic District –

In early 2019, owners began the approval process to construct a two-story garage and storage area behind 922 and 924 Beaver Street – one of the grandest and prettiest duplexes you’ll ever see.
According to the November 2019 Code Enforcement report, Harshman CE stated that it had issued a building permit to the owners for a “garage”.
The owners proceeded with construction until a stop work order was issued by the borough, citing that the project had not been submitted to the borough Historic Review Commission (HRC) for a Certificate of Appropriateness as per ordinance.
Concerns regarding the structure began to surface in the proceedings of both Council and the Planning Commission in March. This continued in earnest with the April Council minutes. The conclusion of the Public Comment portion includes the following:
Click to enlarge.
The public hearing on the project was conducted as part of Council’s May meeting, for which audio is still available online as of this writing. During the hearing, HRC Chair Heather Wildman stated “We have not, and will not issue a Certificate of Appropriateness” for the project, citing that the structure is inappropriate based on height, mass, and style, and may even exceed the maximum height for an accessory structure anywhere in the borough.
Ms. Wildman added that the situation is unique because “a building permit was issued erroneously“, and requested that Council remand the owners back to the HRC to determine what revisions can be made to conform with their requirements. She also stated that the owners submitted a revised plan in March but later withdrew it, citing the high cost.
Council voted in favor of the HRC recommendation, with President Neff stating that he was willing to “work personally” with the owners to achieve some sort of solution. Despite this, the owners did not sound happy with this result.
It appears that the owners may have known that they were in a historic district, but neglected to follow the historic review process once Harshman had issued a building permit without the required review.

5. The June 2018 decision to withdraw from the Quaker Valley Council of Governments. Whether this contributed to the somewhat abrupt departure of long-time Borough Manager Kevin Flannery is unknown, as is the long-term impact on the borough’s operations after shutting themselves out of this cooperative entity, which didn’t cost them all that much to participate in to begin with.

6. The 2018 agreement with turnKey Taxes to optimize the collection of delinquent business privilege tax. This created significant confusion and consternation within the business community, who were essentially unaware that a third party, independent of the regular tax collector, had been retained to collect this delinquent tax, or that there was even a business privilege tax to begin with.

Despite this reaction the borough appears to be pleased with the result, continuing what they see as a successful arrangement to collect the delinquent tax, even in the wake of litigation against what the borough claimed were 15 tax scofflaws.

One of those businesses, attorney Stan Ference, denied in the Herald story that his law firm had not paid the tax. Mr. Ference subsequently filed a Right to Know Law Request for records concerning the borough’s relationship with turnKey. Mr. Ference then appealed the borough’s response to the Pa. Office of Open Records, which issued a Final Determination that is currently under appeal to Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

7. The process of moving sewage treatment to the Leetsdale Municipal Authority (LMA) plant, and converting the existing sewage plant into a pumping station. This would require the construction of a pipeline from the Sewickley plant on Chadwick Street to the LMA pump station in Edgeworth.

The nascent Sewickley Gazette, published for the last year or so by the ladies who brought us Character Matters, stated in a 2019 report that “Sewickley Borough Council Members have recently voted to pay for an Act 537 Sewage Facilities Program; if implemented, Sewickley will send its wastewater to Leetsdale.”

In the second of two reports on the subject, the Gazette stated that the current Council inherited this decision gate from previous administrations, who around 2009 reviewed a previous offer from Leetsdale and arrived at the following –

Borough Manager Kevin Flannery and then-borough Engineering firm KLH argued that it would be prohibitively expensive to build the pipe to transfer the wastewater and that Leetsdale’s facility wasn’t ready…Leetsdale’s Sewer Authority and its borough engineer dispute that.

The amount to upgrade Sewickley’s Chadwick Street plant? $3.5 million. Borough Council voted unanimously to improve Sewickley’s plant. For reasons not yet clear, that $3.5 million expense ballooned; the bond stands at just under $10 million…They will continue to pay off this bond every month until 2030.

Sewickley Sewage Treatment Plant. – YouTube

Mr. Flannery seemed to have a particular affinity for the sewage plant, as evidenced by a 2012 video presentation touting the plant’s operations after these improvements were complete.

This change of heart displayed by Council in 2018 may have been another signal of his imminent departure. The ladies at the Gazette also had some thoughts about this.

Sewickley Council should be commended for making this move.

Not only will the resulting consolidation help to provide more efficient service, but Sewickley will be largely relieved of making expensive improvements to an aging facility that continues to receive violation notices from regulators, and whose odor has been the bane of nearby commercial and residential properties.

Per LMA Board Chairman Jon Kuzma, the Act 537 plan has been completed, and must be approved by the eight involved municipalities. These consist of all Quaker Valley communities with the exception of Sewickley Heights, Sewickley Hills, and Glenfield. Once these approvals are secured, the plan will go to the Pa Dept. of Environmental Protection for final review and approval. Then a call for bids for pipeline construction can be issued.

Mr. Kuzma added that the newer LMA plant is currently operating at 50 percent of its capacity, and will be ready to handle the additional wastewater once the pipeline project is complete.

It’s unfortunate that Sewickley may still be saddled with bond indebtedness until at least the next decade. Should the other involved municipalities see the long-term wisdom of this arrangement, the borough will eventually see an end to putting good money after bad, and customers will hopefully enjoy quality service at lower rates.

8. The imposition of an event fee on organizers of festivals and other public events, and the defunding of Explore Sewickley. While the borough did rescind the fee for this year in response to backlash received from various business and community groups, it appears that starting in 2021 these events will be subject to some type of fee schedule.

It’s understandable that Council would desire to have these events contribute in some way to covering the expenses the borough incurs for hosting them, with the exception of police services that are paid for separately.

I’m wondering if the borough has explored an enterprise fund approach to special event operations, where the event fees charged are earmarked to fund any activity (public or private) related to the marketing, administration, and safe conduct of those events. How much of a fee could be reasonably charged, and how much of a budget those fees can support, are just two of the issues to be considered with any future action in this area.

9. When Council re-re-resurrected the Sewickley Parking Authority in 2015, I’m not sure that they envisioned the political “zombie apocalypse” that would follow.

From the en masse resignation of the 5-person Board in early 2018 and the appointment of a new board a few months later, things seemed to become more interesting every few months as well. This included signs of increased acrimony between the board and Council, as evidenced by comments attributed to Mayor Brian Jeffe, documented in the September 2019 Council minutes –

Mayor Jeffe commented that he was opposed to the tone of policy of the Parking Authority, as it is damaging to the business community. He commented that it is not appropriate to allow appointed, not elected, officials set the policy for the town.

This was followed by the resignation of board Chair Richard Webb later that month, the appointment of Vice Chair Delvin Miller to replace him, and the jettisoning of Mr. Miller amidst the reduction in board size from 5 to 3 members in January of this year.

The new, streamlined board scheduled and conducted regular monthly meetings into the pandemic, until they again resigned en masse, replaced by three sitting Council members. Prior board members Sandra Marr and Brian Turk did not respond to requests for comment.

This Council-dominated board conducted a virtual meeting on May 20, and also released a comprehensive Request for Proposals (RFP) for an “Integrated E-Citation Management & Processing System (CMPS)”.

According to the RFP’s Scope of Work, the new system –

…will need to be installed in concurrent (sic) with the Sewickley Parking Authority’s existing parking system…it is meant to be implemented, tested and ready to be connected to new affiliated parking payment systems that SPA will be procuring.

The RFP process appears to be coordinated by Philip Savino, who until very recently served as Chief Technology Officer of the Pittsburgh Parking Authority. Mr. Savino did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

The above language and other information in the RFP appears to indicate the Authority’s intent to replace the pay stations installed in 2016 and 2017, to the tune of over $440,000 according to Sewickley Herald reporting at the time.

This reporting also alluded to difficulties with the vendor over the machines’ durability and performance. Information from other sources allege that a much higher total cost is involved, with the existing equipment still around seven years away from being fully depreciated.

There is much more to report on later about issues surrounding the Parking Authority, it’s latest “spin-off” iteration, and the general state of parking in Sewickley.

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As Jeff Neff’s aspirations for higher office appear to be on hold for now, I’m hoping that he and his colleagues on Council can really try to put aside any partisan differences and work to improve on some of the above issues, as well as the ones that continue to develop.

There was actually a positive sign of cooperation and resolve in Sewickley on the Saturday before Memorial Day, one that Mr. Neff, Council, and perhaps all of us can learn from.