Election board will not consider UASD question
Fayette County solicitor Sheryl Heid said her legal opinion to disallow a ballot referendum concerning renovations at Uniontown Area High School will stand, and the county’s election board will not be convened to review the decision. Last week, members of the Uniontown Citizens Advisory Committee delivered letters to the county election bureau and to a member of the election board asking that Heid’s determination be reviewed.
The committee proposed a referendum to ask Uniontown Area School District residents if they favored continuing with a renovation project at the high school. Heid, in her capacity as solicitor, determined that the word “favor” made the question advisory in nature.
Under case law from the early 1990s, referendum questions have to be binding, meaning the district would have to abide by the voters’ decision. Advisory questions, as the name suggests, only give a consensus of thought but do not require a government entity to act in accordance with the results.
The proposed question, turned in with about 810 signatures supporting it, read: “Do you favor the continuation of the Uniontown Area School District’s high school building project?”
The question surrounds a project that initially came in at a cost of $45 million. Altman & Altman, the Uniontown architectural firm working on the project, has since reduced the scope of the project and lessened the cost to about $35 million, according to school board members.
The board secured $35 million in 2003 for the project, and has been repaying the loan since that time.
Members of the citizens committee oppose the cost of the project and believe it should be scaled down further.
Heid said that advisory committee members need to get an attorney for legal advice, noting that neither she nor any members of the election board are permitted to offer legal advice to them.
Advisory committee member Timothy Sandstrom, who also is running for the school board, said the group probably would do just that.
“I think we’re probably going to wind up going to (Common Pleas) court and appealing,” he said. “It’ll be on the fast track, quite obviously.”
A letter to election bureau head Laurie Lint from citizens committee member the Rev. Peter Malik indicated that a state-published referendum handbook had no requirement that a referendum petition contain the full text of a question as it will be submitted to voters and also that the county election bureau is responsible for determining the wording.