Paterra back for another round
Christopher Buckley
Frank Paterra stands and listens while in community room at the Charleroi Municpal Buliding.
Frank Paterra adjusts the flag in council chambers at the Charleroi Municipal Building recently.
Christopher Buckley
Frank Paterra sits back and contemplates the question. He neither accepts nor rejects the possible characterization that he appears to be a lightning rod for Charleroi politics.
A decade after he overwhelmingly was elected mayor, but then attracted controversy with his outspoken, unabashed opinions and ideas, Paterra hopes he is wiser for the experience.
Then 10 days into his appointed term on council, Paterra cast a deciding vote that eliminated the borough’s manager position and axed the current officeholder Donn Henderson. Paterra said the move he supported was aimed at reigning in expenses, but critics claimed political undertones.
Councilman Jerry Jericho accused his peer Larry Celaschi Jr. of holding a personal vendetta against Henderson when the vote was taken during a council meeting Thursday night.
It was a decade ago when Jericho lost the mayor’s race to Paterra.
Paterra unified the electorate at the time with calls to take the fight to drug dealers in the Magic City. But he was often at odds with council which rejected his ideas and accused him of bringing a bad light to Charleroi.
Four years after his election, he lost a re-election bid to Councilwoman Nancy Ellis, one of his biggest critics. Both lost to John Mollenauer for mayor in 2013. When Mollenauer resigned in March, it set in motion a series of events that led councilman Terry Newstrom to be elected to the final two years of Mollenauer’s term — and Paterra tabbed to fill Newstrom’s term.
With a self-deprecating, slightly nervous laugh, Paterra claims Charleroi was not making the same headlines without him battling council as he did for four years.
Paterra’s term as mayor was full of ideas and headlines.
In 2007, Paterra brought in the founder of the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa, and organized a Charleroi-based Angels. When Sliwa spoke at a public meeting, he packed Charleroi’s community room. Paterra, in turn, drew criticism from council for holding the public meeting on a Friday night in fall, a popular time for high school football
The chapter remains intact, though dormant, Paterra noted.
“I just wanted to scare the drug dealers,” Paterra said. “The Guardian Angels wasn’t council’s idea. If it had been, the chapter would have been fine.”
He also claimed once that he would be “mayor for life.” That crowning had a lifetime of four years.
“I guess I was a legend in my own mind,” Paterra said with a laugh.
When he prepared to move into the mayor’s office, it was dirty and smelled, Paterra said, so he moved his office into the community room. Council ordered him to move back into the first floor office designated for the officeholder.
And move in, he did.
They accused him of living permanently in the borough building with his German shepard.
“I did shack up there a couple of times,” Paterra said, admitting he was on a limited budget for a short while after retiring from the mill.
“I was naive and idealistic and bucked heads,” Paterra said. “You can’t proceed with gridlock and personalities.”
Paterra was just 27 when he was first elected to the Charleroi Area School Board in 1973, just six years removed from a tour of duty in Vietnam.
Appointed to North Charleroi council in 1983, he advocated for a hydroelectric power plant on the Monongahela River nearby which he claimed would set the community up fiscally for life. It never materialized.
He would wait nearly 20 years to win election to public office again.
A week after elected, he told a chiefs of police association gathering at the Charleroi Eagles Club he was waging “a war on drugs.” Paterra said the FBI supported him.
“I predicted a drug epidemic and we have got one,” Paterra said. “We’re worried about boat docks and we have to attack this issue.”
A decade later, Paterra claims he has learned to sit and listen.
“I tried to do too much too soon,” Paterra admits.
“I want to work with the people and without personality conflicts.”
Asked if he became embattled, Paterra replied, “It became too personal. They were against what I wanted to do because it was not their idea.”
Then Paterra goes back to the question.
“A lightning rod? I feel very good about what I’ve done,” Paterra said. “I take this very seriously. I think we drove a lot of undesirables out of town.”