North Huntingdon delays decision on waiving building permit fee for Norwin

Norwin school officials will have to wait another month before finding out whether North Huntingdon will waive a $15,575 building permit fee for a school roofing project.

The township commissioners on Wednesday tabled making a decision until July on the requested waiver.

The move comes a week after a majority of the board voted against waiving the fee for a Hillcrest Intermediate School project.

The commissioners rejected Norwin’s request to waive the building permit fee, noting Norwin had raised real estate taxes on residents and commercial property owners by one mill for the 2022-23 school year.

The commissioners also noted Norwin was not fulfilling its part of a deal to provide recreational programming in return for North Huntingdon assuming the cost of about $22,000 for school crossing guards.

Norwin Superintendent Jeff Taylor said in a statement Thursday that the school district values the continued partnership with the township. As a result of the questions that arose at the meeting, the school district will provide “additional information on the community programs offered to aid in their discussion and decision-making process.”

Although the school district had provided the township with a list of programs it provides the community to comply with the agreement, Commissioner Jason Atwood described it as “a bad list,” offering to reconsider the township’s refusal to waive the fee.

Atwood opposed waiving the fee at the June 9 meeting.

Commissioner Ron Zona said he still does not feel comfortable with the list the school district provided. What the school district is providing is “not free and not beneficial to all residents,” Zona added.

Commissioner Virginia Stump said the list of programming the school district outlined was mostly recreation they would have provided. Stump said the only program she saw for the community as a whole was a technology class for senior citizens, but the school district charged the participants $10.

Stump repeated her position that she would be opposed to having township inspectors, and possibly an engineer, conduct inspections of the school project.

Commissioner Lyndsay Wengrzyn, however, had favored granting Norwin the waiver because it is spending the same tax dollars as the township. She said the issue of the school district raising taxes should be kept separate from the issue of waiving the fee.