Mt. Lebanon’s Teen Center to become municipal recreation program

Mt. Lebanon’s long-running Teen Center looks to resume as a municipal recreation program in 2016.
The Teen Center, held since the late 1980s as Friday-night events for middle school students, suspended operations in October because of lack of volunteers and high insurance costs.
At the discussion session prior to the Dec. 8 Mt. Lebanon Commission meeting, recreation director David Donnellan spoke about his department’s preparing to take over the program, with the commissioners’ support.
“We need to get moving as quickly as possible with hiring a coordinator,” he said, estimating a six-week process. “Once we have someone on board, we would like to get a program going shortly thereafter.”
The coordinator’s salary is paid by the municipality and already has been budgeted, according to Donnellan.
He met Dec. 1 with Kristen Swentosky, president of the Teen Center board, and Michelle Heck, who recently joined the board of the soon-to-be-defunct nonprofit organization.
Swentosky told commissioners at the discussion session that Karen Saulsbery, Teen Center coordinator for 16 years, and Marcia Johnston, board treasurer, “fully support the rec department taking over and guiding us to the next step.”
She said that the lack of volunteers took its toll in the program.
“While many chaperones would commit to help at our events, they would not show up,” Swentosky said, while citing as a hindrance the tightening of state laws regarding volunteers obtaining clearances. “We are finding that it is a challenge to find people who want to step up and do all of that.”
Meanwhile, high insurance costs resulted in the cancellation of gymnasium activities, such as basketball, during events.
“Not a lot of kids want to come to the Teen Center and just dance or do a graffiti wall or get tattoos,” Swentosky explained. “They wanted to blow off some steam after a long week of school. So we saw our numbers decrease and felt really bad about that.”
As an organization, the Teen Center has stopped insurance coverage and is receiving a refund check.
“Once that check clears, our treasurer will work on closing the books. She’ll then file the 990, and that will be it,” Swentosky said, referring to the relevant Internal Revenue Service form.
Some money still will be available after the nonprofit is dissolved.
“We would like to donate the remaining funds to the two schools that have hosted Teen Center since the very beginning,” Swentosky said about Independence and Jefferson middle schools. “They really, really treated us well.”
Heck took the opportunity to thank Saulsbery and the Teen Center’s board members for their efforts.
“I think they did a tremendous service for the kids of this community,” she told commissioners.