Charleroi Council threatens blight fines against school district
CHARLEROI – Charleroi Council is giving the local school district a month to develop a plan on blight it owns or face fines on the building under a demolition order for two years.
Council Thursday voted unanimously to have its code enforcement officer send Charleroi Area School District a letter giving it the deadline to address the Atlas building at Second Street and McKean Avenue, property it received in a 2011 donation.
“We want to speed them up to do something,” Charleroi Code Enforcement Officer Michele Harris said before the council meeting began in the borough building.
Council President Paul Pivovarnik said the district went back and forth over whether or not the building would be sold for the past two years.
He said council now wants a “timeline” on the property from the school district.
The district voted in February to sell the Atlas building and the nearby former high school football stadium for $100,000 to JaBo Enterprises of Aliquippa, a company that backed out of the sale a month later.
District Superintendent Ed Zelich said earlier Thursday the school board was still working on a plan to seek bids for the two properties as a package deal and at a minimum selling price of $100,000.
Zelich said he needed more information from the borough before commenting on any decisions council would make that night on the Atlas building, which has a large hole in its roof, but is otherwise structurally sound.
In other business Thursday, council agreed to apply for a matching $100,000 grant from the state Department of Community and Economic Development to finish capping an abandoned natural gas well discovered leaking a few years ago in the basement of a house at 922 Rear Fallowfield Ave.
Pivovarnik said the borough’s contractor for the project stopped work on it when the borough drew down a different grant for the work last year, and Charleroi since paid the company $2,000 a month to draw down that debt.
The house was demolished, and the well is no longer leaking.
Council also voted to waive permitting fees for the local fire department when it conducts fundraisers.