Unity supervisors retain former state senator Regola to lobby for grants

Unity officials are turning to a former Pennsylvania senator for help in landing state funding for proposed improvement projects.

Supervisors this week hired Robert Regola of Hempfield to lobby on behalf of township grant requests in Harrisburg.

Regola, who offers additional services in government affairs and business development through his Regola Consulting firm, will receive a monthly retainer of $2,000 under a one-year agreement with the township. Regola also serves as a consultant for Mt. Pleasant Borough and Penn Township.

While the supervisors will continue to work with the township engineer, Gibson-Thomas, to prepare grant applications, Regola “is going to push the envelope,” supervisors Chairman John Mylant said, adding, “It doesn’t hurt to have another guy on the team. He’s going to be an asset.”

Regola was elected to the Senate in 2004 and served one term. He dropped his re-election bid after being acquitted of perjury for statements about how he stored his gun and related firearm offenses. Those charges stemmed from an investigation of the 2006 shooting death of a 14-year-old neighbor, with a handgun that Regola kept in his master bedroom. The death was ruled a suicide.

Unity supervisors have developed an extensive wish list of projects, including some that could cost upward of $15 million, Supervisor Mike O’Barto estimated.

The list includes replacing the aging roofing on the municipal building and on the township salt shed and installing a security fence around the public works building.

The supervisors also would like to build a recreation center and replace a boccie court with a flexible space for basketball or pickleball games.

The wish list for the adjacent township lake and surrounding walking path includes perimeter lighting, a handicapped-accessible fishing pier and a hydrant for use by the township’s volunteer firefighters.

The proposed recreation center would “facilitate events for seniors, for youth leagues and anything that would pertain to any sports or social activities,” O’Barto said. That includes a program operated in partnership with the Greensburg YMCA that brings senior citizens to the municipal building meeting room to exercise.

In tandem with such improvements, O’Barto said, the parking lot at the township building could use another 20 to 25 spaces.

The township should add to its roughly 23,000 population in the 2020 census, he believes, noting, “We need to start thinking about putting more infrastructure in and things for our future adults and youth.”

Additional items on the supervisors’ wish list include installing flashing signals to warn motorists on Route 30 that they’re approaching the traffic signal at Lewis Road; installing support arms to replace cables that suspend traffic signals at Route 30 and Route 981; adding play equipment at playgrounds in Hostetter and Whitney and updating ones in Marguerite and Pleasant Unity.

Rest room renovation, excavator OK’d

Two items the supervisors can cross off their wish list are renovation of the municipal building’s rest rooms and purchase of a new Gradall excavator, both approved this week.

A grant will help cover the $88,000 cost of the rest room project, awarded to JLD Construction of Canonsburg. The facilities, which date from the 1970s, will be refurbished to meet current standards for handicapped accessibility.

Unity is purchasing the Gradall from Highway Equipment of Zelienople, at a cost of $360,000. O’Barto said it will replace an existing excavator that has developed problems that would cost more than $50,000 to remedy.

“It’s a machine that we use a lot,” he said, including for pipe installation and working on road berms.