Published: November 26, 2009 11:13 pm      

School plans ‘not binding,' township and engineer warned

EBENSBURG — Cambria Township’s solicitor is warning consulting engineers and supervisors not to go too far with plans for the controversial new middle school until the newly elected school board members have given the

$10 million project their stamp of approval.

“Until the new school board has voted on the new school, plans for the project are not binding,” he said at the township meeting Monday.

Quoting a higher court decision that boards cannot bind successor school boards to a decision, Dennis Govachini said he wanted assurances that the new board has voted on the new school.

Until then, the decision is not binding, he told supervisors.

At issue is an application for an exemption from the state-mandated sewage planning module, which L.R. Kimball consulting architects and engineers were asking the township to submit.

That agenda item prompted Govachini’s questions about whether new board members had voted.

The key issue in the November election was whether to renovate the aging middle school building in Ebensburg or build a new middle school annex near the high school on the Route 422 campus.

Winning the election were Rose Marie Sadosky, who strongly opposes building a new structure and who beat bank executive Eric Rummel, and Don Cessna of Ebensburg and Dennis Simmers of Cambria Township – both of whom have expressed some reservations about spending $10 million on a new building rather than

$3 million to $5 million renovating the existing one.

The makeup of the new school board is seen as a challenge to the new schools Superintendent Vincent DiLeo, who favors constructing a new middle school on the campus in Cambria Township.

Monday was not the first Cambria Township meeting where controversy over the proposed new middle school project flared before supervisors.

In October, supervisors rejected a Kimball application for a state construction permit to build a middle school addition because they said the paperwork was outdated and incomplete.

Susan Makosy was listed as the applicant, even though she retired as superintendent in June, and the application was not signed or dated.

Supervisors also had received a land development application, which they conveyed to the township planning commission.

Those applications were a surprise not only to supervisors, but also to DiLeo.

“I had not known they had sent those applications,” he said at the time.

DiLeo then said the project was still in the design stage, but opponents said it added to their perception that the project is racing ahead regardless of objections or fiscal concerns.

Others viewed it as an attempt to get the necessary approvals before fiscal conservatives took office as school directors, but Kimball’s staff said it was merely an oversight.

That staff on Monday assured Govachini and supervisors that the submission being approved was merely a sewage planning module and did not constitute any kind of permit.

“That’s okay then,” Govachini said as supervisors approved it.

“But we cannot be granting a permit until the new board votes,” he said.