Oral arguments heard in appeal of Allegheny County Court's decision of Quaker Valley High School

A pair of Quaker Valley area residents hope a state court’s decision will send plans for a proposed high school back to Leet Township’s zoning hearing board.

Oral arguments were made at the top floor of the City-County Building, led by attorney Lou DePaul Jr. of the firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott on behalf of residents William Jasper and Michelle Antonelli.

Attorney Daniel Gramc of the firm Goehring Rutter & Boehm represented Quaker Valley School District.

The proposed school is on 150 acres of land off Camp Meeting Road. It straddles Leet, Edgeworth and Leetsdale. Estimated project cost is about $105 million.

How we got here

The issue at hand is the district’s application for a special exception to build a school in the township, which Leet’s ZHB denied in February 2022.

Its members had nearly a dozen conditions for approval, including crafting a developer’s agreement with the township and the district and having the downhill property owners named on the district’s general liability insurance policy.

However, the board’s decision largely hinged on the district’s refusal to include an emergency access road for first responders to and from the property.

Quaker Valley attorneys argued at the time that much of what the ZBH was asking was done in the site development stages and not part of the zoning.

The district took the zoning hearing board to court over its actions, and an Allegheny County Common Pleas Senior Judge Joseph James ruled in Quaker Valley’s favor in November.

James said in his opinion that the board cannot demand an emergency-only road because the township zoning ordinance does not include any such criteria for a special exception.

“The board has no jurisdiction regarding road design,” he wrote.

The zoning board held 11 hearings between June 2021 and February 2022. That effort resulted in at least 2,500 pages of testimony from numerous witnesses and experts.

ZHB in December declined to appeal James’ decision. Jasper and Antonelli persisted.

What was said

DePaul went before Commonwealth judges Ellen Ceisler, Michael Wojcik and Bonnie Leadbetter. He stressed the safety concerns of his clients and also of the ZHB.

“I think that the record is replete with direct evidence of harms that were likely to occur, or that could occur to the community as a result of the construction of the school, the operation of the school, folks being in the school, the lack of an emergency (road),” DePaul said.

He talked about how Camp Meeting Road was a windy and dangerous road, and claimed that the district had no plans to improve the road.

“Wouldn’t that be part of a development plan?” Leadbetter asked.

“It could be, in theory, handled by the planning commission,” DePaul replied. “However, that was not what was tasked to the zoning hearing board.”

Wojick pressed for a specific finding that Camp Meeting Road would remain the same as part of the project.

DePaul could not cite such finding at the hearing.

“There is evidence in the record that a reasonable person could conclude that there are no plans to change the road,” said DePaul. “The school district may speculate and say, ‘We’re going to do whatever we need to do.’

“Well, there’s no evidence. There’s no submission that says, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do to the road.’”

Gramc refuted DePaul’s claim that there was no evidence about changes to Camp Meeting Road.

However, he conceited that such plans may not have been as detailed as DePaul’s clients and the ZHB may have liked at the time.

“When you get into the details of the development, you need detailed engineered drawings saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’” Gramc said. “They don’t exist at the zoning hearing board (level).”

Gramc also stressed the objectors did not have substantial evidence to deny the district’s special exception.

“When we get to a reason to stop a special exception, it has to be a substantial harm that’s going to occur,” said Gramc. “(It) has to be ‘highly probably,’ not ‘may occur.’ Those were the questions that were asked at the (zoning) hearings. It has to be something that is not normally expected from the school use. They would have to find there was something out of the ordinary for this school, which is a public school governed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

“It’s not a private vocational school that might have an autobody shop there, or a private vocational school that may be teaching young folks how to drive a tractor trailer with 18 wheels up and down. It’s not that kind of a school. … There should be no conditions on this.”

Gramc said the search for a viable property to build a school went on for about a decade.

The school district did its due diligence in selecting the Leet site, including looking at zoning and available land, Gramc said.

DePaul requested the court uphold the ZHB denial and have the matter be remanded back to that board for more consideration.

Next steps

It may take a few months to get an opinion from the state court.

Jasper, who is running for a seat on Quaker Valley School Board, offered a statement via email to the Tribune-Review in which he said they don’t anticipate the court’s decision until early next year.

“It’s impossible to know,” Jasper wrote. “We argued that, although the Leet zoning ordinance permits a club, church or school, that the proposed QVSD high school constituted ‘abnormal’ use, detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of the community, given the known traffic and geotechnical hazards of building on a hilltop with unstable soils.

“If zoning is upheld, we asked that it be subject to the 10 conditions the Leet Zoning Hearing Board would have required. All are related to safety of occupants, kids in cars/buses on a dangerous road and the downhill residents.”

DePaul declined to comment after the hearing.

Charlie Gauthier, district director of facilities and administrative services, spoke on behalf of Quaker Valley’s legal team.

He said he was “surprised” at DePaul’s comment about there being no plans to improve Camp Meeting Road.

Gauthier said the district did provide evidence in the preliminary plans given to the township that there would some changes to the road to make it safer.

“We had improvements to Camp Meeting Road at Beaver Street, and we had roadway alignment up top with turning lanes,” Gauthier said. “All that was submitted and shown at zoning.”

Gauthier said his team feels confident the Commonwealth judges will side with James’ ruling.

The school board adopted a resolution last month setting the maximum project costs at $105 million. Anything more than that would be subject to a referendum.

The district plans an Act 34 hearing at 7 p.m. Oct. 26 at the high school, 635 Beaver St. in Leetsdale.

The hearing is a state requirement on any major construction plans such as new buildings or significant renovations.