Aspinwall has joined the North Hills COG

Aspinwall is now a member of the North Hills Councils of Government (COG), leaving its longtime membership at the Allegheny Valley North group.

Council green-lighted the move, saying the change was based largely on logistics.

“The AVNCOG was great and served Aspinwall well,” council president Tim McLaughlin said. “However, we have a great relationship with our neighboring municipalities and were definitely a geographic outlier in (the AVNCOG) membership.”

McLaughlin said council agreed that the makeup of the North Hills COG would allow the borough to better enhance local relationships and work collaboratively with communities it is adjacent to.

The cost for membership in the North Hills COG also produced savings for the borough, with dues of $4,000 compared to the AVNCOG, which was about $7,000, Aspinwall manager Melissa Lang-O’Malley said.

Councils of Government are coalitions of municipalities that benefit from joint purchasing and other intergovernmental cooperation.

The North Hills COG includes 20 communities situated in the Lower Valley, along the Allegheny River and in the Shaler area. Most of the municipalities in the Fox Chapel Area School District belong to the North Hills COG, including Fox Chapel, O’Hara, Indiana Township and Sharpsburg.

Etna, Millvale and Shaler also are members, as is West Deer.

O’Malley said the borough will get the same benefits as far as grants and services.

Through the COG, member communities can tackle regional challenges and take advantage of cooperative agreements such as equipment sharing and hazardous waste collections.

“A perfect example of the membership already being a benefit to our residents is the multimunicipal effort to support snow plowing in case covid-19 would’ve impacted our borough crew,” McLaughlin said. “This would have been a struggle with AVNCOG to coordinate, based on our proximity to the other members.”

Membership also allows the borough to have a more open dialogue about some of the shared infrastructure issues it experiences, similar to those of neighbor communities, McLaughlin said.