Uniontown board fails to approve building project
The Uniontown Area School Board did not vote on the Uniontown High School renovation and construction project during Monday night’s meeting. Instead the board opted to hold a May 25 meeting to discuss saving the 1910-11 section of the building, a plan presented to the board by architect for the project, Mark Altman, during an executive session.
The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the high school chorus room, where regular meetings normally take place.
Before a crowd of around 100 residents, several of whom asked the board to reconsider going ahead with the project before the announcement to hold another meeting was made, Director Ken Meadows made a motion to scale the project back to a cost not to exceed $30 million and to use the money left over in the bank to renovate Lafayette and Ben Franklin schools.
The motion failed 4-5, following the same split vote that has caused the school board’s decisions on the project to pass with only a slight majority since the project’s beginnings. Voting for the motion were Meadows, Bill Rittenhouse, Ron Machesky, and Lloyd Williams. Voting against the proposal were Harry “Dutch” Kaufman, Nancy Herring, Susan Clay, Tammy Boyle and Dorothy Grahek.
The public, unaware of exactly what the new information presented to the board was since it was discussed with Altman in executive session near the start of the meeting, pressed Clay to reveal the information that could possibly sway her current position.
After Clay failed to reveal details of the new information, Machesky told the audience that the the board was considering saving the 1910-11 section as a free standing structure, unconnected to the current school building, and forging ahead with the remainder of the plans, including a new gym and new cafeteria.
Machesky said after the meeting that the cost of the new idea could be $1 million less than the current $42 million price tag.
Meadow’s motivation for his motion was that the cost of the new plans would be the same or possibly a little less than the current proposal.
Kaufman, who has been held up by the public as the primary proponent of the, called the new information a “compromise” that the board is currently working on.
The Rev. Peter Malik, an ardent supporter of preserving the 1910-11 section, which he earlier said is eligible for historic status, said after Meadows’ motion failed that he was a little happy with the news that the school board is considering not tearing down the old section of the school building, but asked the board to go one step further and consider not spending $6.5 million to renovate the gymnasium, instead pumping that money into Ben Franklin, Lafayette and the Fayette County Area Vocational-Technical School.