Mount Pleasant Council mulls lawsuit over police car
MOUNT PLEASANT — Members of council are waiting to hear if Ford Motor Company will agree to their request for $10,000 rather than a new car after a Ford Taurus the borough purchased over a year ago for the police department turned out to be a lemon.
Solicitor Deanna Liptak reported Monday that she contacted a representative with Ford about the request.
“I relayed to them that if we didn’t hear back from them by the end of June that we would file a civil lawsuit,” she said.
Last August the borough began the process through Liptak of communications with Ford Motor Company regarding their opinion that the car was a lemon.
The borough asked Ford for a new car to replace the Taurus, but Ford disagreed with the assessment.
Last month, Councilwoman Diane Bailey asked council to approve the purchase of a dump truck for the street department.
Borough Manager Jeff Landy reported to council last month that he would like to ask C. Harper Ford to give the borough $10,000 on a trade-in of the Taurus toward the purchase of a new car for the police department.
To sweeten the deal for C. Harper, Landy suggested the borough would not only buy the new police car, but they would also purchase a dump truck from them as well.
The borough has two years from the time they first filed a formal complaint in August to file a lawsuit. If they don’t file within this time frame, the opportunity passes, and Ford can wash their hands of the case.
In other business, Councilwoman Cynthia Stevenson asked Liptak if the borough could have the code enforcement officer use the guidelines of Act 90, which is the state’s blighted property legislation.
Liptak said the borough could certainly do that, but trying to enforce the guidelines for those homeowners who live out of state could prove to be difficult.
“The best way to enforce this is for each county’s court of common pleas to set up a housing court, but Westmoreland County does not yet have (a housing court),” she said.
Council president Jack Caruso questioned whether the county would more readily look at setting up a housing court if each of the 14 local municipalities within Westmoreland County would look at adopting Act 90 guidelines as their guides for blight enforcement.
Liptak said it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
In other business, Benjamin Faas of The Eads Group reported to council the status of the proposed South Geary Street sanitary sewer replacement project.
Faas said, after looking into the project, they found that at the bottom of the hill on that street, all of the storm drain lines and sanitary sewer lines come together, but there is no slope there to make the flow run smoothly.
“We need to schedule another committee meeting to discuss some changes that need to be made to the project before we bid it out,” he said.
Motions were also passed to appoint Al Dawson acting volunteer director for Mount Pleasant Emergency Medical Services, to approve the purchase of three lights and one controller for Veterans Park in the amount of $786 and to approve an agreement with G. H. Harris to continue as the borough’s delinquent per capita tax collector for 2017.
Other motions passed included one to approve a contract with Century Insurance Consultants for liability insurance for an annual premium of $36,221 and to accept the renewal proposal from Higbee Insurance for the Mount Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department in the amount of $24,770.