This Meeting was recorded for Accuracy
Meeting was opened by Mayor Clark Baird at 7 PM.
Present: Solicitor Michael Smith, Keith St.Clair - late arrival at 7 :10 PM. Gladine McMaster, Dan Short, JR, Sue Bartow
Absent: Lou McLaughlin
Public Attendance: Mellissa Miller, Adrien Cameron and Daughter, Heidi Speidel
Old Business:
Approval of May minutes
After review and several corrections - page 3 the word shop is to be corrected to shut, page 6 the words need by company change to needed be, and page 10 the word is change to it. Motion to approve minutes made by Sue 2nd by Boone, all in favor motion passed.
Approval of Treasurer Report
After review by council Gladine motioned to approve treasurer report, 2nd by Dan Short. All in favor motion passed.
Meeting was turned over to Keith St.Clair, Vice President at 7:10 PM upon his arrival.
Solicitor Report:
Michael presented council with answers to questions presented from prior meeting.
Questions to be addressed:
Michael spoke with Victoria Bauer of the Westmoreland County Planning Commission regarding zoning. She confirmed the process of enacting a zoning ordinance as I understood it and stated it at the April meeting. She indicated that the Westmoreland County Planning Commission can help the borough develop and write a zoning ordinance, although Bolivar would have to pay for the services. She stated that the Planning Commission recently helped Youngwood Borough write a zoning ordinance, and that anyone is welcome to reach out to her.
In addition, he found the following rules for adopting borough licenses:
A valid municipal license fee must be imposed by ordinance which meets these four indispensable requirements:
1. The business or activity licensed must be of a type which is subject to governmental regulation under the police power; and
2. The licensing ordinance must, expressly or by clean implication, regulate the licensed business or activity or the property or instrumentalities used therein;, and
3. The regulation must be reasonable, and must bear a real and substantial relation to the object sought to be accomplished within the scope of the police power; and
5. The amount of the license fee may not exceed the actual or probable cost of special municipal services *735 needed and actually rendered to enforce the regulation imposed by the licensing ordinance, and which are not otherwise furnished or required.
Univ. Park Cinemas, INC v. Windber Borough, 59 Pa.D. & C. 2d 726, 734-35 (pa.Com.Pl. 1972)
Keith wanted to know if FAVOR would be grandfathered in from a zoning ordinance since she is already an established business. She is just extending to another building.
Michael said this could pose a problem since she has had her business for several years.
Sue has a list of 10 items that she feels council needs to have a copy of for FAVOR to produce. Sue stated the list came from John Kovac.
Sue did not read the list to council. She presented it to Michael, council Attorney for review.
Keith asked if we have a right to asked for her permits that Sue has on her list.
Michael said because she already has other permits that is required for her business then we can ask for copies.
He said he could write a letter to her and ask for copies, since the laws governing her business are already in place.
Sue said she was supposed to be at the meeting tonight to give us her agenda for the place and she is not here. Clark asked if she sent us something already. Pat said she gave us a copy of her expectations and agenda for the new location last month.
Sue said we are still entitled to have a copy of the list of items that John gave us for her.
Clark said we still cannot continue to dump money into our Solicitor to do these things because we are going to run out of money. Sue said to Clark this is up to council and not you. Clark then spoke up and said he still can state his opinion on the matter.
Sue said we are satisfying to the people.
Public Comment
Adrien states that Kim has no building occupancy permit. Keith said he would check before the next meeting for the insurance coverage and permits.
The other side of this is you have to think of the community. I know , I called, she does not have an occupancy permit. She can't be doing what she is doing. She cannot bring the building up to code because you have to have so many fire sprinklers, you have to have so many bathrooms ,and so many bedrooms,. This 23 hour thing she talks about does not exist. There is nothing that says you do not need an occupancy permit if you are housing someone for less than 23 hours. You are a nonprofit you have to have this stuff. She doesn’t have the proper license or insurance. If something happens to someone in town, who is going to pay for that? The people in town are going to be coming back on council for this. She is being a vigilante; just because you help someone in recovering does not mean you understand the regulations in those programs. End of Story. There is going to be a lot of hoops she needs to get through before she gets that occupancy permit.
Clark said that is her responsibility. It is not councils to pay for all the costs. If you say the community is against the center then where are all the people?
Adrien said the people are not against her, the people are against her housing people there. Nobody said to stop having your meetings, stop having art galleries, stop have your other stuff. We said do not house people there.
Clark said, 5 people in 7 years. Adrien said, "not just a couple weeks ago they had someone housed out there. The person left and whoever was staying with them was screaming profanity with one another". Tell me that is ok for all the children in town to be hearing at 2:30 - 300 AM ..
Sue commented it started at 8 PM.
Keith interacted to stop the conversation. We are not trying to shut her down, we know what she is trying to do. He will go up and ask about her insurance stuff. We then will have to prove it was someone from her facility.
Heidi asked about any ordinances for home business usage. We must be extremely careful on discrimination issues arising from harassment. I tele- work and do a lot of stuff out of my house. I currently am not doing treatment work and I am retiring shortly and possibly would like to continue to do at home. I personally pay a lot of taxes in this town. That church has had a history of many people staying there over night, when it was a church and now as FAVOR. There are people running businesses out of our houses and we have never been told we have to have a business permit to do this. Are you going to go house to house to find who is running a business?
Keith said we have never even considered starting an ordinance for this. We have only asked Michael to look into what the process would be. We don't want to see a full blown center here. Is it needed here? Yes. I personally don’t want to see it. As of right now nothing is going to change. If something is to be written as an ordinance it has to be posted for so long for all to review. It would not be without a fight.
Your points are very valid but to answer your question, everything is staying like it is. If and when we do an ordinance it will have to be very defined.
Old Business:
Update on the purchase of pipe and backflow valve for Kovac water issue.
Pat was informed by Lou that the company he ordered from in Latrobe was to deliver the pipe today.
Sue said John is working on it now and that is why he is not at the meeting tonight,
Clean- Up Days is set for June 22, from 8 am to 3 PM. Lower park.
Rates are as follows:
$5. Per car and $10 per ½ ton pickup, and small trailers
$15 per dump truck and large trailers
No paints, tires, refrigerators, air conditions, TV’s or computers will be accepted on Clean up Days
Also nothing containing FREON
Signup sheet is being passed around council for their time frame.
Are we using both boro workers for clean up days or just one.
Sue commented that we should used both workers and adjust their hours.
Any other old business to discuss:
Sue , said yes. Has anyone noticed the cell tower is up and running. Heidi said she has AT&T, and she has no service.
Also in Robinson, the Dollar General property is being surveyed. The Dollar General Store is being put up at the bus turnaround in Robinson.
New Business:
Street Sweeper.
Pat said Lou had asked her to contact the Street sweeper for pricing. I contacted Dave from Penn Sweeping. He said it definitely would be much less than last year because of the very mild winter we had. He worked 12 hours last year for a total of $1832. This year he said it should not be more than 5 or 6 hours so the cost will be much lower. If I recall it was $1,000 just to bring it here .
Discussion among council members was to look at the last boro worker. He felt it was the property owner responsibility to clean between the curbs and the worker would only do the intersections. If our current employees would like to try it and want the money for it, then I don't see why we would need the street sweeper.
Gladine to talk to workers on the street cleaning.
Personnel matter.
Pat said since Lou is not here then I will have to go back with you to discuss the situation. Executive meeting called at 6:40 PM.
6:42 meeting restarted. Personnel matter resolved.
Any other business to discuss. No
Mayor report:
Clark asked if he should say anything to the new owners that bought Dutches' property about the burnt car to have it removed. They are still working on the cleanup of the property. Gladine suggested just to not say anything yet and let them continue to cleanup.
Sue said she was talking to them about the grass and they said they did not know anything about a grass ordinance.
Clark said they were told about it.
Sue said when they did the dye test on Stumble Inn she ask why they had not cut the grass.
The benches at the upper park. They are pretty ratty. Mellissa said you guys can remove them if you want. We have a grant in but we are not going to spend any of our money for a temporary fix. You can have the boro worker remove then wooden benches or replace the wood. If you take the wood off then you still have the concrete sides. You would have to remove the whole thing. Just replace the wood.
The fire department is tearing down the trailer now.
Sue asked about the garage at Janet Hall property. Someone needs to address this issue.
It is a safety issue for the borough as well. She lives in Ligonier with her daughter.
Street Commissioner Report:
Gladine said she has nothing to report.
Sewage Report
Sue said meeting is next week. Libby Hughes is currently off the board and Frank Tantlinger has replaced her.
Parks & Rec
Pat said Lou had ask me to look into the security camera's for the port-a-john being knocked over at the lower park over Memorial Day weekend. He had been getting calls from a certain person who commented, "why are we paying for security cameras if we are not going to sue the person or persons who are doing this". They had seen several boys carrying noodles over their heads going down to the creek and just knows they did it. We need to take them to court for this. I sat my entire 4 hours of work reviewing the cameras for that weekend. At 1:31 PM on Saturday the boys walked thru the lower park and never did a thing. Nothing had happened to the port-a-johns the entire day. I reviewed half of Sunday tapes as well. Gladine came into the office and she had mention that her husband and daughter had set the port-a-john back up on Monday. So I went back to Sunday night to watch the tapes again. At 9:14 PM we had a very bad storm with high winds. The wind was so strong that it blew the lids off the small hopper and also knocked the port-a-john over. That so concerned person was so quick to judge the kids walking thru the lower park and accuse them for doing this.
We have a security company who monitors the cameras and if they have a concern or see a situation that needs addressed then they will let me know. We cannot keep pre-making up stories and trying to blame kids for something that they did not do. We only had 1 issue and that was 2 years ago and when we posted the individual on Facebook , it was not 15 minutes when we knew who it was and the situation was taken care of.
We just need to quit prejudging people for going down to the lower park.
Keith said that it is not your job to review the security cameras. If someone wants to complain about an issue, call one of us and we will go thru the cameras. If someone wants to complain give them a complaint form to complete.
Mellissa said if someone cannot come to the meeting and complain about it then we should not even talk about it.
We have 2 grants. We are currently working on the basketball court and it is not being done like it should be. We are trying to rectify the problem.
Pat produced the photo of the bronze plaque that is going to be placed at the court.
She also showed the 2 new signs for Berkey Park as the old ones have Berkey Park misspelled.
Our next concert is on June 23. Band is K-4 from 4-to 6 pm.
We are selling Christmas ornaments. This will be an annual thing. They will be each year something different , so everyone will know the history of the town.
Keith asked if there was anything else to discuss. If not, motion to close at 7:50 made by Boone, 2nd by Sue .
Respectfully,
Patricia Betts
Secretary/Treasurer