Connellsville residents seek FEC help in developing West Side, downtown
CONNELLSVILLE – Developing a strip of land on the city’s West Side and attracting new businesses to the downtown are two of the top priorities for the city’s future. That opinion comes from residents who attended a recent meeting with the Fayette Enterprise Community (FEC), which has held a series of sessions across the county, in an effort to determine what’s working and what’s not.
Robert C. Junk, FEC strategic planning manager, said the residents who attended the public meeting at the Connellsville Community Center mentioned the importance of developing the strip of land at the intersection of routes 201 and 119 to attract tourists to the Youghiogheny River Bike/Hike Trail and the need for new businesses to locate in the downtown area.
The FEC has held meetings in portions of the cities of Connellsville and Uniontown and the townships of Redstone, Dunbar and Menallen.
“These areas were selected based on many factors, including the percentage of poverty in the community. In addition, there are three industrial sites in the FEC: the Connellsville Airport in Dunbar Township, the Fayette County Business Park and the Springhill Township industrial site,” Junk said.
Another need that the FEC is looking at in Connellsville is transportation. Lisa Malago with Fayette Area Coordinated Transportation (FACT) was at the Connellsville meeting and reviewed the FACT system with the group of residents.
Malago said FACT is conducting a survey to find out why more Connellsville residents are not using the transportation system.
Junk said after-school and housing programs are an additional concern expressed by Connellsville residents, as well as improving the response time of area emergency medical services.
“After-school programs are important in Fayette County because two out of every three children live in poverty,” he said.
To combat this problem, Junk said, the FEC has established programs in the schools that help students with their studies, in an effort to keep them from becoming dropouts.
He also noted that other issues, such as parent involvement, are just as important as receiving a quality education.
“We are trying to reduce poverty on one hand, while placing the needs of children on the other, and, quite frankly, it’s a juggling act,” he said.
Junk said the FEC is seeking two residents from the Connellsville area as representatives on the FEC Implementation Committee. He said the representatives must be aware of the issues in their community and work toward solutions.
The community residents, who attended the meeting, agreed to appoint former city council members Sharon Rendine and Roy Taylor to serve a two-year term on the implementation committee.
Junk said that in the past several years, the FEC has established benchmarks relative to issues that residents want to see improved upon or changed. The FEC has 98 benchmarks in various stages of completion.
“As a result, the organization is reaching out to the residents that live in the FEC communities for their input as to current needs, improvements and changes that are needed in their community,” said Junk.
“That’s why these meetings are being held in areas which are considered highly distressed.”
Connellsville and Uniontown, along with Redstone, Dunbar and Menallen townships, were selected based on many factors, including the percentage of poverty in the community, said Junk.
In September, the FEC received $459,450 to fund various benchmarks, according to Junk. The FEC board approved 19 of the benchmarks, which included a three-year commitment to the Connellsville Airport, the Uniontown Police Department, Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Redstone Foundation, the State Theatre Center for the Arts and the Downtown Uniontown Business District.
The first step in establishing a benchmark, according to Junk, is to determine what needs to be improved in a community.
Junk said lot of work must be done in several areas of the county, and he reminded residents that the problems they are seeing did not occur overnight and will not be fixed overnight.
For more information about the FEC, visit www.faypenn.org, contact Junk by e-mail at bobj@faypen.org or call his office at 724-437-7913.