Oct 4, 2016 2 min read

CANONSBURG – Canonsburg assistant officer manager Denise Lesnock worked six months doing the duties of two people as interim borough manager.

Canonsburg Council unanimously voted in September to hire her as official full-time manager at a salary of $75,000 and, as highlighted in Monday’s agenda meeting, a lot of her time will be spent getting zoning and code issues sorted out.

Mayor and council said they were mulling an abandoned structure ordinance as incidents were reported in which paving or other construction has been going on without official notice.

“There’s a lot in front of a building near the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Water Street and and somebody there was cleaning up and lo and behold, they’re trying to put in a parking lot,” said council President R.T. Bell.

Mayor Dave Rhome said an ordinance looking to curb such activity without consulting the borough should be discussed in committee meetings.

“People are trying to slide stuff in on us and we all have to be a little more observant. We can’t be so believing when somebody says they’re just cleaning something up, as they told me. They need to go through the process and have engineers, zoning and planning and every step look at it,” Bell said, “so if you see suspicious activity along those lines call us.”

In other business, police Chief Alexander Coghill said the borough is hiring a new part-time officer, Eric Cersosimo, at a rate of $17 an hour. His hiring replaces an officer who resigned and maintains an 18-member force with two part-time officers.

Coghill also said he is vetting filmmaker Giuseppe “Joe” Lucarelli as he proposes a low-budget crime thriller movie that uses Canonsburg police vehicles and borough landmarks for props and sets.

“I just want to make sure it’ll cast the borough in a positive light. He’s also asking for any off-duty officers to participate in background shots. I don’t think we should be using our uniforms. But he wants to shoot Oct. 7-9 and said it would not interrupt operations in any way,” Coghill said, “so I requested to see the script and we’ll see where it goes.”

Bell, the former police chief, laughed and said he was still waiting for his cut of the revenue from “Croaker,” a low-budget horror movie filmed in Canonsburg and released in September 2014.