Back in April, a legislative proposal designated House Bill 2431 was introduced into Pennsylvania’s General Assembly. While its sponsors claim that their goal is to improve the efficiency of local government in the state, it is actually a radical piece of legislation which would effectively outlaw local government as we know it.
What the bill proposes is to organize local government in Pennsylvania on a county basis and give the counties jurisdiction over personnel, police, land use zoning, sanitation and other responsibilities currently managed by municipalities. Cities, townships and boroughs, to the extent that they continued to exist, would have their duties dictated from the county seat.
As a practical matter, it seems unlikely that the bill will gain much traction. After all, it would require changing the state’s constitution, and that’s a very long and difficult process. And besides, there’s no groundswell of public support for it. Perhaps its greatest significance is that it highlights the tendency of some state legislators to point the finger of blame at everyone but themselves for the Commonwealth’s largely dysfunctional and disconnected state of governance.
After all, when was the last time you had the opportunity to speak before the General Assembly or the U.S. Congress on an issue that concerned you? Or even to know exactly what they were voting on? Probably never. But just about every week of the month, somewhere in Butler County, local residents are attending their local board or council meeting to speak out about a concern or interest of theirs.
Pennsylvania’s smaller municipalities, unlike its larger cities or the state government itself, are actually doing a great job of providing services, responding to residents, and balancing their budgets. The notion that bigger units of government are more efficient is laughable. Just look at Harrisburg or Washington, where there is essentially no fiscal discipline.
The average Cranberry household pays about $680 a year in Township taxes, and in return they receive 24-hour police, fire and EMS services, maintenance of over 100 miles of local roads, world-class recreational facilities, planned community development, a first-class community library, and responsive local officials. That’s less than I pay for home cable and Internet. Yet that same average resident pays the Commonwealth about $8,000 and the U.S. Government $27,000 a year. So where am I really getting my money’s worth?
We have nothing against our good friends in Butler County government, who work hard to do their best with the tasks they’ve been assigned. And frankly, they want nothing to do with taking over the Township’s duties. Perhaps what’s really needed is to turn the bill’s proposed realignment around and hand the powers of the state over to Pennsylvania’s municipalities. At least that would put the public’s welfare into the hands of its most accountable and effective units of government.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Sic transit
You’ve probably read about the proposed route cuts and fare hikes in Port Authority’s bus service. If they happen as announced, Cranberry residents who currently commute to Pittsburgh from nearby Warrendale – which is at the outermost fringe of Port Authority’s Allegheny County service territory – would be shut out altogether starting in January. And so would a bunch of other communities.
If it sounds familiar, that’s understandable; similar deep slashes in service and fare hikes have been announced in the past, only to have some last-minute deal save most of what had been threatened with elimination. So a certain amount of route-cut threat-fatigue has begun to set in, and there is a lot of scepticism about whether this is for real or if someone’s just crying wolf.
I don’t have any special insight into how this will ultimately unfold. But I do know that there’s a huge gap in Pennsylvania’s transportation funding, which had counted on tolling I-80 to generate revenue before the feds shot that idea down. And it seems unlikely that the General Assembly will find the missing $450 million tucked away in its well-padded sofa between now and January.
Adding insult to injury, those of us who use the Turnpike frequently will now be paying some of the highest tolls in the nation. At one time, those rates were pegged at the cost of maintaining and improving the Turnpike itself. Now they’re being used to pay for transportation projects all over the state. So since state officials won’t do what’s right by distributing PennDOT’s costs fairly across the Commonwealth, we’re being forced to pay extraordinary heavy Turnpike fees to cover holes in state funding. Maybe that’s why the Feds turned down the I-80 proposal, which seemed to do the same thing in the northern part of the state.
In the meantime, Port Authority is required to give public notice of any potential rate hikes or service cuts. So what you’ve heard about proposed changes has actually been mandated by the state. And, in all fairness, Port Authority has made a number of changes over the past few years to get its house in order and Allegheny County enacted some unpopular taxes to help fund it. But if worse comes to worst, and the service stops, is there anything Cranberry can or should do about it?
For the record, Cranberry has been consistently supportive of public transit. Over the years, we have worked closely with regional agencies and Butler County agencies to introduce service to, through, and around Cranberry Township. We’ve received awards, participated in studies, made financial pledges, and received various grants in support of that effort. We still think transit will be an important part of our future. And we will continue to be advocates for it.
At the same time, like everyone else, we’ll be keeping a close eye on developments that affect transportation funding, including public transit. And we’re hoping for the best. But also like everyone else, if those cuts really do materialize, we’re preparing to endure some major travel headaches.
If it sounds familiar, that’s understandable; similar deep slashes in service and fare hikes have been announced in the past, only to have some last-minute deal save most of what had been threatened with elimination. So a certain amount of route-cut threat-fatigue has begun to set in, and there is a lot of scepticism about whether this is for real or if someone’s just crying wolf.
I don’t have any special insight into how this will ultimately unfold. But I do know that there’s a huge gap in Pennsylvania’s transportation funding, which had counted on tolling I-80 to generate revenue before the feds shot that idea down. And it seems unlikely that the General Assembly will find the missing $450 million tucked away in its well-padded sofa between now and January.
Adding insult to injury, those of us who use the Turnpike frequently will now be paying some of the highest tolls in the nation. At one time, those rates were pegged at the cost of maintaining and improving the Turnpike itself. Now they’re being used to pay for transportation projects all over the state. So since state officials won’t do what’s right by distributing PennDOT’s costs fairly across the Commonwealth, we’re being forced to pay extraordinary heavy Turnpike fees to cover holes in state funding. Maybe that’s why the Feds turned down the I-80 proposal, which seemed to do the same thing in the northern part of the state.
In the meantime, Port Authority is required to give public notice of any potential rate hikes or service cuts. So what you’ve heard about proposed changes has actually been mandated by the state. And, in all fairness, Port Authority has made a number of changes over the past few years to get its house in order and Allegheny County enacted some unpopular taxes to help fund it. But if worse comes to worst, and the service stops, is there anything Cranberry can or should do about it?
For the record, Cranberry has been consistently supportive of public transit. Over the years, we have worked closely with regional agencies and Butler County agencies to introduce service to, through, and around Cranberry Township. We’ve received awards, participated in studies, made financial pledges, and received various grants in support of that effort. We still think transit will be an important part of our future. And we will continue to be advocates for it.
At the same time, like everyone else, we’ll be keeping a close eye on developments that affect transportation funding, including public transit. And we’re hoping for the best. But also like everyone else, if those cuts really do materialize, we’re preparing to endure some major travel headaches.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Rattlesnake rights
The other day a resident came up to me and asked: why are we spending all that money signalizing and adding turning lanes to the Franklin-Peters intersection?
I’m glad they asked. But first, a little background.
There have been more than two dozen serious accidents at that intersection since 2005 plus a bunch of others that were just fender-benders. And the volume of traffic there keeps increasing. It was clear that something had to be done, so this summer, we’re spending about $600,000 to install a traffic signal. We were able to bundle enough to make it happen by combining federal safety money, which is managed by the state, with Township funds. So that really is a lot of money.
And it offers a perfect snapshot of why it’s become so difficult to make public improvements anywhere. First of all, since federal money is involved, it follows a whole different set of rules from ordinary projects. There’s a sad truth behind the maxim ‘don’t make a federal case of it.’ It’s that so many additional steps and hearings and documents and studies and consultants are required to satisfy federal regulations, that progress slows to a crawl. And all of it costs money.
Planning and design costs used to represent 6 or 7 percent of the project’s total. Now they’re closer to 25 percent. In Pennsylvania, as in most of the rest of the country, we over-design roads to accommodate the most reckless and irresponsible drivers. We strip away any trees they could conceivably hit. We bulldoze hills and level bumps and engineer everything else we do to reduce the risk of liability lawsuits.
Then the federal-state wage rules kick in, so that costs become at least 15 percent higher than local projects, where the rule doesn’t apply. Inspectors need to have different certifications than for other projects, and we have to pay a premium for that. And environmental specialists have to be hired to prove, just as we had to with the Northwest Connector Project, that the road improvement won’t disturb the habitat of the elusive massasauga rattlesnake – a species which has never actually been seen in Cranberry.
And that’s not even counting the rising cost of materials – asphalt, steel, gravel, and so on.
So there’s no single smoking gun behind the high cost of public improvement projects. But the cumulative impact of all these developments has made it virtually impossible to build new things and made those which do go forward breathtakingly expensive. By giving virtual veto power to anyone or anything that might object to a project for any reason, we have allowed ourselves to fall hostage to our own democratic impulse and good intentions. And that’s why the Franklin-Peters project is so expensive.
I’m glad they asked. But first, a little background.
There have been more than two dozen serious accidents at that intersection since 2005 plus a bunch of others that were just fender-benders. And the volume of traffic there keeps increasing. It was clear that something had to be done, so this summer, we’re spending about $600,000 to install a traffic signal. We were able to bundle enough to make it happen by combining federal safety money, which is managed by the state, with Township funds. So that really is a lot of money.
And it offers a perfect snapshot of why it’s become so difficult to make public improvements anywhere. First of all, since federal money is involved, it follows a whole different set of rules from ordinary projects. There’s a sad truth behind the maxim ‘don’t make a federal case of it.’ It’s that so many additional steps and hearings and documents and studies and consultants are required to satisfy federal regulations, that progress slows to a crawl. And all of it costs money.
Planning and design costs used to represent 6 or 7 percent of the project’s total. Now they’re closer to 25 percent. In Pennsylvania, as in most of the rest of the country, we over-design roads to accommodate the most reckless and irresponsible drivers. We strip away any trees they could conceivably hit. We bulldoze hills and level bumps and engineer everything else we do to reduce the risk of liability lawsuits.
Then the federal-state wage rules kick in, so that costs become at least 15 percent higher than local projects, where the rule doesn’t apply. Inspectors need to have different certifications than for other projects, and we have to pay a premium for that. And environmental specialists have to be hired to prove, just as we had to with the Northwest Connector Project, that the road improvement won’t disturb the habitat of the elusive massasauga rattlesnake – a species which has never actually been seen in Cranberry.
And that’s not even counting the rising cost of materials – asphalt, steel, gravel, and so on.
So there’s no single smoking gun behind the high cost of public improvement projects. But the cumulative impact of all these developments has made it virtually impossible to build new things and made those which do go forward breathtakingly expensive. By giving virtual veto power to anyone or anything that might object to a project for any reason, we have allowed ourselves to fall hostage to our own democratic impulse and good intentions. And that’s why the Franklin-Peters project is so expensive.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The longest journey begins with a single step
More than 250 years ago, George Washington walked through Cranberry along an Indian footpath we now refer to as the Venango Trail. Although it must have been scenic, and I am sure he got a lot of exercise, it was actually a business trip for him, and the route he took was the fastest and most direct way of getting from Point A to Point B.
You can still follow in Washington’s footsteps – the Venango Trail is essentially today’s Franklin Road alignment – but you would have to do so at your own peril. Over the years Cranberry, like most other American communities, slipped away from the idea of walking as an important form of mobility and instead built its connecting routes around motor vehicles. Pedestrian traffic has become marginalized almost to the vanishing point. And it’s just not safe to walk on roadways.
As far as I can tell, motor vehicles will continue to be a primary form of mobility in Cranberry, as well as the principal method for moving goods, for generations to come. But there are a lot of people here, myself included, who think we may have gone too far in pushing out pedestrians to accommodate cars. In both our 1995 and 2009 comprehensive plans, one of the top issues that concerned residents was the difficulty of walking safely to a nearby store or neighborhood. They thought it was unnatural to have to drag two tons of steel along on an errand to pick up a quart of milk. And besides, not everyone has a car or a drivers license.
So we’re doing something about it. Although we’ve required developers to add sidewalks as a condition of receiving building permits for some years now, we’re still some distance from having a coherent system of walkways. And there’s no plan in place to create one – at least not yet. But that’s about to change.
We’ve had several groups of residents looking into ways we can expand and integrate our walkways and bike paths into a cohesive network – possibly using portions of the Township’s own road and utility rights of way. And they’ve come up with some recommendations. At 6:30 on July 27, we’re inviting anyone who’s interested – especially bicyclists and walking enthusiasts – to stop by the Municipal Center to review those recommendations and offer their own ideas about what the priorities for developing these pathways ought to be. And that will help us take the next step.
You can still follow in Washington’s footsteps – the Venango Trail is essentially today’s Franklin Road alignment – but you would have to do so at your own peril. Over the years Cranberry, like most other American communities, slipped away from the idea of walking as an important form of mobility and instead built its connecting routes around motor vehicles. Pedestrian traffic has become marginalized almost to the vanishing point. And it’s just not safe to walk on roadways.
As far as I can tell, motor vehicles will continue to be a primary form of mobility in Cranberry, as well as the principal method for moving goods, for generations to come. But there are a lot of people here, myself included, who think we may have gone too far in pushing out pedestrians to accommodate cars. In both our 1995 and 2009 comprehensive plans, one of the top issues that concerned residents was the difficulty of walking safely to a nearby store or neighborhood. They thought it was unnatural to have to drag two tons of steel along on an errand to pick up a quart of milk. And besides, not everyone has a car or a drivers license.
So we’re doing something about it. Although we’ve required developers to add sidewalks as a condition of receiving building permits for some years now, we’re still some distance from having a coherent system of walkways. And there’s no plan in place to create one – at least not yet. But that’s about to change.
We’ve had several groups of residents looking into ways we can expand and integrate our walkways and bike paths into a cohesive network – possibly using portions of the Township’s own road and utility rights of way. And they’ve come up with some recommendations. At 6:30 on July 27, we’re inviting anyone who’s interested – especially bicyclists and walking enthusiasts – to stop by the Municipal Center to review those recommendations and offer their own ideas about what the priorities for developing these pathways ought to be. And that will help us take the next step.
Drill baby?
Cranberry’s Board of Supervisors is about to take up what could become a sensitive topic: drilling into the Marcellus Shale for gas. Pennsylvania law says that unless we specify where it’s permitted, Marcellus Shale drilling can go anywhere in Cranberry Township. Not only that, state law bars local government from regulating anything the Commonwealth regulates, including Marcellus Shale drilling.
At least right now, the only way a municipality can regulate drilling is to zone for where it may be permitted – and it has to be permitted somewhere. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection preempts local government from regulating any other aspect of the operation. By June of this year alone, the DEP had issued 1,985 new Marcellus drilling permits, and 763 wells in the state are either completed or under construction.
To my knowledge, there is no Marcellus Shale drilling proposed within the Township, at least not at this time. But our Board of Supervisors doesn’t want to wake up one morning and see drilling rigs where they would least expect them. So they’re being proactive about it. You can read the zoning ordinance they're considering on our website: Proposed Natural Gas Ordinance
The reason for all this concern is the huge volume of natural gas found in the Marcellus Shale layer, about a mile below the surface. It’s a massive rock formation, and geologists estimate that it contains more than 300 trillion cubic feet of gas – enough to supply the entire nation for decades. Even if only a fraction of that were recovered, it could become an economic bonanza for the entire region and a game-changing event in America’s energy picture.
Since the first successful well was built in Washington County seven years ago, there has been something of a land rush to secure leases on property for constructing wells into the Marcellus layer. So far, most of them have been in rural areas, including state parks. That’s understandable because these wells generally require a big surface footprint – five acres is typical – as well as connecting pipelines, heavy truck traffic and the associated noise, all of which would seem to make them poorly suited to residential areas.
But that’s not necessarily the case. According to the Post-Gazette, at least 57 parcels of property in densely populated Lawrenceville, right in the heart of Pittsburgh, are already under agreement with gas leasing agents. And that’s despite the fact that state law prohibits deep well drilling within 200 feet of an occupied building. The reality is that unless a community zones for that type of activity, drilling can go anywhere. So Cranberry is taking the initiative to zone for that possibility.
It’s a situation that puts local government in the touchy position of balancing a landowner’s ability to maximize the return on his or her land against the interests of the larger community which may be affected by the impact of that activity.
But doing nothing means drilling could go anywhere. So on August 5, the Board will hold a public hearing on a proposed zoning ordinance affecting gas resource development. An informed, educated and civil discussion among our residents will help us meet this challenge. And I’m confident we will succeed because meeting challenges is precisely what Cranberry Township is about.
At least right now, the only way a municipality can regulate drilling is to zone for where it may be permitted – and it has to be permitted somewhere. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection preempts local government from regulating any other aspect of the operation. By June of this year alone, the DEP had issued 1,985 new Marcellus drilling permits, and 763 wells in the state are either completed or under construction.
To my knowledge, there is no Marcellus Shale drilling proposed within the Township, at least not at this time. But our Board of Supervisors doesn’t want to wake up one morning and see drilling rigs where they would least expect them. So they’re being proactive about it. You can read the zoning ordinance they're considering on our website: Proposed Natural Gas Ordinance
The reason for all this concern is the huge volume of natural gas found in the Marcellus Shale layer, about a mile below the surface. It’s a massive rock formation, and geologists estimate that it contains more than 300 trillion cubic feet of gas – enough to supply the entire nation for decades. Even if only a fraction of that were recovered, it could become an economic bonanza for the entire region and a game-changing event in America’s energy picture.
Since the first successful well was built in Washington County seven years ago, there has been something of a land rush to secure leases on property for constructing wells into the Marcellus layer. So far, most of them have been in rural areas, including state parks. That’s understandable because these wells generally require a big surface footprint – five acres is typical – as well as connecting pipelines, heavy truck traffic and the associated noise, all of which would seem to make them poorly suited to residential areas.
But that’s not necessarily the case. According to the Post-Gazette, at least 57 parcels of property in densely populated Lawrenceville, right in the heart of Pittsburgh, are already under agreement with gas leasing agents. And that’s despite the fact that state law prohibits deep well drilling within 200 feet of an occupied building. The reality is that unless a community zones for that type of activity, drilling can go anywhere. So Cranberry is taking the initiative to zone for that possibility.
It’s a situation that puts local government in the touchy position of balancing a landowner’s ability to maximize the return on his or her land against the interests of the larger community which may be affected by the impact of that activity.
But doing nothing means drilling could go anywhere. So on August 5, the Board will hold a public hearing on a proposed zoning ordinance affecting gas resource development. An informed, educated and civil discussion among our residents will help us meet this challenge. And I’m confident we will succeed because meeting challenges is precisely what Cranberry Township is about.
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