Oct 30, 2019 3 min read

A Washington County judge ruled on Tuesday that Canton and Chartiers townships must share the more than $200,000 price tag for a new bridge that spans Chartiers Creek and straddles the boundary separating the municipalities.

In doing so, President Judge Katherine B. Emery granted Canton’s request for a 50-50 split of the costs to fix the Airport Road bridge where Airport Road crosses the creek following an Oct. 17 hearing.

Canton’s attorneys, Dennis Makel and Chris Furman, submitted a petition in April in a bid to make the adjacent town share in the costs of replacing the bridge.

They said a state Department of Transportation engineer had notified local officials during the previous August that the bridge was so badly deteriorated that it would have to be repaired or replaced.

Emery decreed that Canton can also proceed with having the bridge replaced.

The attorneys wrote Canton had tried to negotiate with Chartiers to divide the costs, but the towns “had been unable to amicably reach an agreement on the proportionate share of the costs” to bring the bridge into compliance with PennDOT’s standards. Engineers from the firm Harshman CE Group recommended replacement – which would cost roughly $228,400 – and said repairs on the bridge would come to about $57,900.

Emery said Chartiers contended it should only have to pay for just 3% of the costs, and that the bridge didn’t have to be replaced. James Liekar, the township’s attorney, didn’t return a message left at his firm.

Told of the court’s decision, Makel said Emery’s decision on the costs “followed the law.”

In her three-page verdict, the judge said “little or no maintenance” had been done on the bridge since it was replaced in 1986. A predecessor of hers ruled that Canton had to pay for 70%, with Chartiers covering the other 30% of the costs to replace the Airport Road bridge and another, known as the Oak Hill bridge, two years later.

Emery cited several other factors she said the law allowed her to consider. She said the population is about 8,000 in each municipality. Chartiers’ average household income ($65,650) makes it wealthier than Canton ($48,800), and Canton’s poverty rate of 17.7% is nearly four times that of its neighbor’s, which is 4.5%.

The towns each own half the bridge. Eight households make the Canton the only one with residents living on its side of the bridge.

“Mitigating the greater responsibility to Canton based on the number of residents on Airport Road is the disproportionate wealth of Chartiers Township,” she concluded. “The general population is equal and presumably all the residents benefit equally and the bridge is equally owned.”