Editorial: Westmoreland County should have played ball with Hempfield

Counties can own a lot of real estate.

There is the courthouse. The jail. There may be various other buildings housing things such as public services or district courts. Maybe some parking lots or recreation areas.

The Pennsylvania Constitution lets counties buy land or buildings as necessary, provided they don’t pay more than fair market value. It also prescribes how they can divest themselves of that property.

They can lease it. They can sell it, again at fair market value.

But there is a provision that allows that rule to be bent. Property can be transferred to other government entities or related organizations like fire companies or nonprofits. It isn’t uncommon for real estate to move like a conveyor belt from state to county to municipal hands and back again.

The reason is simple: If property serves the people, does it matter which government body is on the deed?

With that in mind, the Westmoreland County commissioners’ decision not to transfer Swede Hill Park to Hempfield Township makes little sense.

Hempfield has leased the 17-acre park for 25 years for a whopping $1 per year. But with that lease came a lot of other benefit to the county — namely, the investment it didn’t have to make in maintenance and improvements. The municipality upgraded both the playgrounds and the ballfields.

So when the time came to talk about renewing the lease, Hempfield asked to just have it transferred instead.

“I don’t think it was an unreasonable ask after 25 years,” supervisor chairman George Reese said.

He’s not wrong.

County Public Works Director Greg McCloskey said the request was turned down because the township wouldn’t pay fair market value. That would make sense if the entity asking to get the property for free was a business or a private citizen who just wanted to pick up 17 acres without paying for it.

But the county has made just $25 off that land over the past 25 years. Why worry about fair market value now? Why wasn’t the park leased at fair market value before? Simple. Because that doesn’t really happen. The essentially free flow of property use and ownership between government entities has been enshrined in Pennsylvania law since at least 1955.

Hempfield says it will focus its efforts in other areas, like a similarly sized property on Route 136. But that leaves the county to pick up the tab for the maintenance at Swede Hill, and if the plans for more improvements at the park drawn up in 2020 are to proceed, that will fall to the county, too.

Seems like an expensive way to save the fair market price and a bad bottom line for county taxpayers.