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Local business leaders gather to hear ‘State of the Communities’

By Jon Andreassi staff Writer jandreassi@observer-Reporter.Com 3 min read
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Jon Andreassi/Observer-Reporter

North Strabane Township Manager Andy Walz speaks at the State of the Communities breakfast Thursday morning.

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Jon Andreassi/Observer-Reporter

Local business owners gathered at Thursday’s State of the Communities event, sponsored by the Peters Township Chamber of Commerce.

Continued development, restructuring and capital improvements were among the topics discussed Thursday morning at the second “State of the Communities” breakfast, hosted by Peters Township Chamber of Commerce.

Officials from Peters, North Strabane Township, Cecil Township, Bethel Park and Upper St. Clair spoke to local business leaders at the Valley Brook Country Club about their goals and potential challenges.

The panel was moderated by Michael Chaido, president and CEO of Washington Financial Bank.

Peters Township Manager Paul Lauer spoke about how new development continues to move forward in their community, despite worries that increased interest rates would slow the building of new homes.

“We haven’t seen that in Peters Township. The fact of the matter is, either under construction, approved or in the pipeline are over 680 new residential lots,” Lauer said.

Lauer added that growth means that Peters has to hire more employees and buy more equipment to continue providing basic services to the community.

“It really is a balancing act to be able to deliver the services that people expect in Peters Township, and maintain what causes lots of people to move to Washington County and Peters Township – that low tax rate,” Lauer said.

Andy Walz, North Strabane’s township manager, explained how the municipality has restructured many of its agencies in the past year.

“In North Strabane we’ve done a couple new things this year. We’ve reformed how our public safety division works. We’ve got a director of public safety that oversees both the police and fire departments, at this point,” Walz said.

He added that he hopes other steps the township has taken will allow for a more streamlined development process in North Strabane Township.

“We’ve combined our planning department and our building code department to create the community development department so it’s easier and more centralized for a developer, land owner to come in and go from start to finish,” Walz said.

Bethel Park was represented by its chief of police, Tim O’Connor. O’Connor has also been the acting manager in Bethel Park since December, which he says is part of a generational change in leadership.

“We just hired a new administrative assistant to replace the one of 32 years that just retired. A new engineer is starting Monday. We have a new planner coming next Monday,” O’Connor said. “And, hopefully, next month a new manager so I can go back to being solely chief of police.”

O’Connor said this change will extend to elected officials after the next election. He hopes for continued “wise leadership” from Bethel Park’s council.

“Our council has always been mixed Democrat, Republican, but behind the scenes pulling together for the good of the community. No partisan polarization or anything. It should serve as a model for the country how they’ve worked for the good of the community,” O’Connor said.

Cecil Township Manager Don Gennuso described development in the municipality as “slow and steady.” He also discussed upcoming township projects.

“We have a $10 million public works facility that is much needed that’s under construction right now. We were fortunate enough to get an LSA grant for $600,000 for a salt storage bin to accompany that facility,” Gennuso said.

Gennuso said increased costs are making projects such as these more difficult to manage.

Matt Serakowski, Upper St. Clair’s manager, said that the community has several ongoing projects, such as an $8 million municipal building renovation. That renovation will include improvements to the library and doubling the size of Upper St. Clair’s police department.

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