Spring 2010
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How Cranberry responded to the huge snow storms of 2010
Cranberry Township Creates a Slogan
What is the Census attempting to determine?
Blue Lights Designate Volunteer Emergency Workers
Cranberry Township Manager invites residents to join him for coffee
Cranberry forms partnership to promote ridesharing
Changes in electric power market affect Cranberry Township
Cranberry’s Emergency Medical Service buys a new ambulance
Cranberry’s Fire Police are given a car of their own
Firemen rescue cat but prefer to rescue people
News Briefs
Public Works crews vigilant for road damage
Cranberry and school district form recycling partnership
Community Days celebration to expand this year
Cranberry Township employment application is now online
Golf course adds new tees
Don’t hide your hydrant
Local resident and company honored
Cranberry WaterPark membership discounts available
School district encourages students toward engineering
Discount on property tax is available
Classes in life-saving techniques are available
Remembering Granddad
Cranberry Parks and Recreation department receives a grant for planning
Cranberry Township water lines to be checked for leaks
Cranberry takes inventory of its traffic signs
Long-range municipal planning provides important benefits, by John Skorupan, Chairman, Cranberry Township Board of Supervisors
Cranberry is planning to add a second main sewer line
Parent-Teacher organizations help Seneca Valley Schools, by Linda Andreassi, Communications Director, Seneca Valley School District
Technology company TrueCommerce moves to Cranberry
How Cranberry responded to the huge snow storms of 2010
Remember the winter of 2010? It will be hard to forget. The once-in-a-generation monster snowfall that began February 5 and continued on and off through the following week, tested everyone and everything in the region. School cancellations, activity postponements, and suspension of business as usual became routine as more than two feet of snow fleetingly transformed the region’s landscape into a wintertime dream tableau.
But for officials of Cranberry Township, responding to the storms and maintaining essential services was anything but a fantasy; it became an all-consuming event, involving essentially every staff member and elected official, as well as dozens of contractors brought in to clear the Township’s roadways.
“We pooled resources from the golf course, Sewer & Water, Streets and Properties, the mechanics – every operator we had available was either on the road or resting after putting in a 16 to 24-hour shift,” Public Works Director Jason Dailey recalled.
From the operations command center at its Public Works building, Cranberry’s directors of Public Safety, Engineering, and Public Works as well as the Township Manager and Assistant Manager, anticipated needs and responded to developments as the storm continued piling on.
At 9:00 on Friday morning, the Township issued a declaration of Disaster Emergency. Unlike a similar decree issued shortly afterward by the state which shut down certain highways, Cranberry’s edict did not prohibit local travel. But residents were encouraged to stay off the roads until crews had the opportunity to clear them.
However, its emergency declaration allowed Township officials to bypass their normal procurement process in contracting with 15 different contractors, operating 32 pieces of equipment including front loaders and plows, to join with the Township’s own fleet of 13 trucks in the massive cleanup endeavor. That effort involved a lot of moving parts:
- By prearranged agreement, every time an ambulance or fire engine was dispatched to the scene of an emergency, a Township plow was diverted from its assigned route to clear a path for the first responders’ vehicle.
- Most of the Township’s 1,400 fire hydrants had become buried by snowfall and by subsequent road clearing operations. But a recently completed GPS inventory had recorded their exact locations so crews from Sewer & Water, together with volunteers from the Fire Company, were able to mark and excavate them within 72 hours.
- Throughout the week, Waste Management missed only one day of trash collection. But where do people set out a waste cart when there’s two feet of snow on the ground? Many residents placed them in the street. So a team of seasonal employees was dispatched to follow the trash collection routes and pull containers far enough back so that Township plows could do their work.
- Firefighters and Public Works operators were put up in makeshift bunk houses overnight and hot meals were provided. That allowed them to avoid making the lengthy and sometimes dangerous trip home before returning a few hours later to work yet another double shift.
- Heavy plowing takes a heavy toll on road clearing equipment. But Cranberry’s three mechanics, aided by their history of good relationships with local parts vendors, service garages and vehicle dealers, kept the Township’s fleet on the road and working through the event. Transmission problems which would normally have taken a week to repair were turned around the same day.
- A standing policy of making sure all Township vehicles, from pickup trucks on up, include some type of snow fighting ability, paid off. Every piece of equipment from the golf course, the sewage treatment plant, and park maintenance that could be outfitted with a blade or bucket was sent out on the road.
- Cranberry’s salt shed, with a capacity somewhere beyond 6,500 tons, was fully stocked when the storm arrived. The salt had been purchased under last year’s $42 a ton contract – $20 below current market levels. Altogether, the storm series spent 3,000 tons, leaving plenty of salt to spare – and $60,000 in savings.
- Cranberry’s local roads include more than 280 cul de sacs, which require a different strategy for snow clearing than linear roads. To open them up, contractors with front loading tractors were brought in to scoop the snow up over the curbs and deposit it on yards or other open spaces.
- The rear-wheel drive Ford Crown Victoria patrol cars normally used by Township police were effectively crippled by the storm. But a growing number of four-wheel drive vehicles have joined the department’s fleet in recent years. As a result, there were no reported problems in making patrols or responding to calls.
- From the time the storm arrived on Friday afternoon until 8:00 Saturday evening, Cranberry’s Customer Service staff, together with Township Supervisors Mike Manipole and Bruce Mazzoni, staffed the phones handling calls from residents covering a wide range of concerns.
- Following the lead of Seneca Valley Schools, many of the programs offered by Parks & Recreation had to be cancelled. But through rescheduling, rearrangement, and planned makeup days, everyone registered will have the opportunity to receive their full program by season’s end.
- All of this came at a price, however. At its peak, the 48-hour period beginning Friday afternoon cost the Township more than $112,000 – not including salaried staff time, meals, or certain other ineligible expenses. An itemized list including nearly 600 hours in overtime wages, plus material, contract labor and equipment rental costs incurred during that time was submitted to Harrisburg for possible reimbursement under the state’s emergency declaration.
It was an arduous effort. As a result, the warm response from local residents was especially gratifying to the exhausted plow operators. “What a great community to work in,” Dailey reflected. “The guys really appreciated the residents expressing their gratitude for the work they did because it’s not an easy job. That is what these guys get paid for, but there’s a human element we take seriously: it’s that these guys have work to do when they get home. Their driveways need to get done so their family can go to the grocery store; their kids have to get ready for school the next day if it hasn’t been cancelled. It’s a life-changing experience when you’re a winter weather operator. So it was nice to see that the residents appreciated the work that these guys put in; they really did take that to heart.”
Cranberry Township Creates a Slogan
“What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.”
“Virginia is for Lovers.”
“Rocky Mountain High.”
“I Love New York.”
Enduring taglines resonate with travelers – and with local residents. They cling to the imagination because they capture a heartfelt truth about a place. And they help to telegraph its story. But it’s not as easy as it looks.
Take the case of Cranberry Township. It’s certainly a good place to live and work – after all, new people and businesses are moving in all the time. And they’ve been doing so despite occasional mean-spirited jabs from others in the region. But what is the emotional heart of Cranberry’s story? And how do you summarize it?
As part of the Township’s comprehensive plan adopted last year, a community identity project was started with guidance from an outside consultant together with members of the Citizen Advisory Panel’s Public Image task force. Their ultimate goals in crafting an identity statement were to strengthen residents’ sense of engagement with their community and add to value to any business or event associated with Cranberry.
But their task was not to sit around thinking up slogans. It was instead to identify the Township’s objective characteristics as well as people’s emotional associations with Cranberry. For example, what is it about Cranberry that people most value? What is it about Cranberry they find particularly distinctive? How do they feel about living in Cranberry? And how do their out-of-town acquaintances describe Cranberry? Those qualities, in turn, would help distill the Township’s essence into a memorable and authentic message.
In addition to information from its Task Force members, the project’s research entailed interviews with opinion leaders from around the region, an analysis of promotional strategies used in other communities, and interpretations of survey findings conducted among Cranberry residents.
The specific findings which kept coming up were that people saw Cranberry as a comfortable place to live, work and play, as a location that’s close to everything, and as a family-oriented community with a forward-thinking outlook and positive energy – a convenient, connected, community that’s responsive to its residents’ needs.
The shorthand tag that emerged: ‘Cranberry Township: Built for You.’ It’s an extensible concept. Variations include Built for Kids; Built for Shopping; Built for Fun. Or, with a slight change in tense, Build a Life; Build a Career; Build your Savings, and so on, according to the message.
To help implement the Township’s new identity, an advertising agency was brought in to develop graphic standards for appropriate use of the new signature line in print and electronic media. This issue of CranberryToday, for example, makes use of those standards in its type font, color palette, and tag line placement.
But it’s not for Township use alone. Organizations and businesses in Cranberry are welcome to make use of the campaign in their own promotions as well. A complete set of user guidelines and templates is available from the Township on request.
What is the Census attempting to determine?
The 2010 Census uses the shortest questionnaire in the long history of the official count – just ten questions. But why those particular questions? The reasons vary. Some – like the names, phone numbers, and headcount of people staying in the household – are simply designed to increase the accuracy of the survey questionnaire itself by avoiding duplication or missing data. But others are more substantive and relate to the way that government programs are implemented. For instance:
• The question about home ownership is a barometer of the nation’s economy and it used to administer government housing programs and to make related planning decisions.
• The questionnaire asks about the gender of each individual. That data is collected because many federal programs are required to differentiate between the sexes for funding, implementation, and evaluation purposes.
• The form includes a question about the date of birth for each person counted. That information is used by every level of government: for eligibility projections related to Social Security benefits, training programs, services for children, for women of child-bearing age, the elderly, and so on.
• The questionnaire asks whether any of the people being counted are of Hispanic origin. That information is used to comply with anti-discrimination provisions in federal voting and civil rights acts and to help other units of government administer bilingual programs.
• The race of each individual is also asked in the form. Many federal acts require monitoring for compliance with their non-discrimination provisions; some states use that information in drawing up voting districts; the data is also used to assess fairness in employment, education, and public services.
The decennial Census, which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, is required to be an ‘actual enumeration,’ meaning that every person must be counted individually. And it’s strictly confidential. But for other types of information related to a community’s education, transportation, housing, employment, financial and social activity, the Census Bureau conducts ongoing and detailed American Community Surveys using a sample of the population which is then combined with the 10-year data and projected onto the community as a whole. And there are others, too.
The Economic Census, a survey conducted by the Census Bureau every five years, covers most of the U.S. economy. The last one was in 2007. Censuses of agriculture and units of government are conducted at the same time. The information they collect is compiled by economic sector into a variety of data sets. The Bureau also carries out Annual Economic Surveys of manufactures, business patterns, and self-employed persons. So it’s constantly gathering useful information.
In 2000 – the last time the decennial census was conducted – 72 percent of the questionnaires which the Bureau mailed out were mailed back by the end of April. For those which were not returned, an escalating series of contacts from Census Bureau employees, including as many as six in-person attempts to collect data, were undertaken. But, as the Bureau makes clear, in-person data collection is not their preference; it costs them an average of $60 to $70 for every form not returned by mail.
But it costs local communities even more. Census data is used to allocate more than $400 billion a year in federal funding programs which are driven by population formulas. That’s more than $1,200 annually for every man, woman and child. For Cranberry, that amounts to more than $35 million, every single year. So the Township’s Board of Supervisors have made a priority of ensuring a complete count of everyone living in Cranberry – regardless of their legal status.
If you have not yet returned your Census form, the Board urges you to do so as soon as possible.
Blue Lights Designate Volunteer Emergency Workers
What’s a driver supposed to do? For years now, there have been nationwide standards for traffic signals, stop signs, warning signs, and highway identification markers as well as for other traffic information systems. So no matter where you come from or where you learned to drive, you’ll know what to do when you see a red light. But that sort of consistency doesn’t apply to everything.
The colors and arrangements of lights mounted on service vehicles are determined state by state. So the colors used to identify a police car in one state can signify something entirely different as soon as you cross the state line. And for Pennsylvania’s emergency volunteers, that’s a problem.
When volunteer firefighters or emergency medical workers in Pennsylvania respond to a call, they are authorized to place a flashing blue light on the dome of their personal vehicles. Using the lamp does not entitle the operator to speed, run red lights, or break any other traffic laws. Instead, its purpose is to alert other drivers that the operator of that vehicle is responding to an emergency call and that, as a matter of courtesy, they should yield the right of way and understand the volunteer’s intentions.
“They’re trying to get to the fire stations or the scene of an emergency.” Cranberry firefighter Mark Nanna explained. “When you see a blue light behind you or coming toward you, this is a person that’s volunteering their time to go to an emergency – either to a fire or an EMS. A lot of residents pull over and let them go by. Some don’t.
“But we’ve had people from out of state get excited because where they live, a blue light means police. Here, it means a volunteer. If we go into West Virginia or Ohio in our personal cars, we’re supposed to put a bag over our blue lights or take them off. You’re not allowed to have them in those states because that’s the police color.”
Not everyone can use a blue light in Pennsylvania, either. There’s a prescribed protocol. “We do it legally,” Nanna explained. “We issue Blue Light Cards. We send them into the state so they know who has them, their license plates, their driver’s license numbers and so on. We do everything by the book. But if people knew what they meant – that this is a person trying to get to a fire station or ambulance base to respond to an emergency – they would show a little more leniency and pull over. But there are people who don’t, and I don’t think they understand.”
Here’s the way it works in Pennsylvania:
• Red almost always denotes an emergency vehicle if its lights are facing forward. Red and blue together are commonly used by police departments with white as an optional third color. Most fire departments and ambulances use a combination of red and white lights.
• White is frequently used as an optional color on roof-mounted lightbars for emergency vehicles, although it is rarely the only color in that display. White strobe beacons used alone often identify school buses.
• Blue is reserved for law enforcement, firefighters and emergency medical services in most states, but in Pennsylvania, when used alone, it designates a volunteer.
• Amber lights are used by construction vehicles, tow trucks, snow plows, oversize truck escorts, security patrols, and municipal service vehicles, particularly when stopped or moving slower than the flow of traffic.
Cranberry Township Manager invites residents to join him for coffee
Residents with something on their minds about the Township will have an opportunity to share it directly with Cranberry’s Manager, Jerry Andree over coffee. Any resident who would like to come is welcome to join him for an informal series of monthly conversations starting April 13.
The first two coffees will take place on Tuesday mornings, from 9:30 to 10:30, on April 13 and May 11 in Panera’s back room, on the lower level of Cranberry Mall. On Tuesday June 22, it will be held at the same time, but in Crazy Mocha at Freedom Square. If you’re available, stop by for as much or as little time as you can spare. No RSVP is necessary, but for planning purposes, a call to 724-776-4086 letting us know you plan to attend would be appreciated.
The monthly series of “Coffee and Conversation,” gatherings is intended to encourage residents to talk about any ideas, experiences or impressions concerning the Township which they would like to share in person with Mr. Andree and with one another. Similar meetings have been convened in other leading communities in the tri-state area and the consensus has been that they were time well spent.
There is no charge to attend; coffee is on the Township.
Cranberry forms partnership to promote ridesharing
Need a ride? Cranberry may be in a position to help. A representative from CommuteInfo – the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission’s commuter program designed to expand ridesharing options – will be available Wednesday mornings by appointment in the Cranberry Township Municipal Center to help local employers and commuters match their travel needs with alternatives to driving alone.
Individuals interested in finding a car or van pool that fits their schedule and destination can complete an online profile linked from the Township’s website,
www.cranberrytownship.org/commuting, to begin the ride matching process.
Matches are made by computer. Matching individuals seeking potential rideshare partners will receive a letter with the contact information you provide. Depending on your profile, that information may also be shared with a vanpool leasing company for the purpose of forming a vanpool. But the decision to participate in any specific carpool or vanpool is strictly up to you.
Some of the criteria a prospective rider might consider would include where they would meet the pool vehicle, the flexibility of pickup times, whether music or radio broadcasts would normally be played during the commute, whether eating or drinking are permitted, whether the driving responsibilities are shared, and whether there is a backup plan in the event of an emergency.
All participants are responsible for the operation of their own carpools or vanpools. However, CommuteInfo funds an Emergency Ride Home service by taxi as a safety net for commuters in the event of an unexpected personal or family emergency, personal illness, unscheduled overtime, or other eligible event.
For many commuters, there are important advantages to ridesharing. One of the most significant is cost sharing. The specific savings will vary from case to case, however the ride matching website includes an online form to help calculate the savings that would apply in specific circumstances.
Cranberry Township’s comprehensive plan emphasizes the importance of alternative modes of commuting, both for residents who work elsewhere and for those who commute into Cranberry for work. The Township’s partnership with SPC is a reflection of that priority. “We think it’s great that SPC is providing the programs and resources to address this important need in our region,” Cranberry’s Chief Strategic Planning Officer John Trant, Jr. noted. “Transportation is always a Number One priority here in the Township.”
Mary Beth Kim, SPC’s ridesharing coordinator, is scheduled to be available between 8:30 AM and 12:30 PM on Wednesdays at the Municipal Center to discuss individual needs as well as those of employers. To schedule a meeting or to discuss your situation by phone, call 1-888-819-6110.
Changes in electric power market affect Cranberry Township
There’s a lot of commotion in the formerly-staid electric utility business here. State regulations are vanishing, generation companies are consolidating, and their affiliations with wholesale transmission networks are getting switched around. That’s led to a very volatile electric power market and, as a major electric customer, Cranberry’s approach to buying power through pooling with others and making layered purchases over time is now getting re-examined.
“It’s going to change our whole philosophy,” Public Works Director Jason Dailey reflected. “It could result in some additional savings for us in the next 12 to 24 months. But we might need to make another big change to our energy management for the next year, mainly because of the effect of First Energy changing the Regional Transmission Organization in which it operates. That’s going to change how suppliers set prices in our market. All of our power and everyone in our pool is going to be affected by this.”
Maintaining the Township’s earlier hedging strategy became even more complicated by a six-month gap between the lapse of Direct Energy’s contract to supply energy to the pool and the onset of First Energy’s transition to a new regional transmission organization. Six months is not enough time for the earlier strategy to work effectively.
But there’s a silver lining: the market is now at a six-year low – around 6.02¢ per kilowatt hour – almost a penny lower than it was last October.
“For every half cent we save, we save $30,000,” Dailey noted. “So if you save a penny and we lock it in for a year, we just saved $60,000 in 2011. We would be paying less for energy now than we were six years ago. It’s just how crazy the energy market is right now; it’s something where you have to make your move when the iron’s hot and the market’s low – to pull the trigger and have confidence that you’re making the right decision when you do it.”
However, pricing in the current energy market changes hourly. It’s affected by an enormous range of factors. “A new forecast is issued every Thursday,” he said, “and things can change within that week so dramatically it’s unbelievable. It can move three cents in a week, which is why that layered approach we were using made so much sense. It’s just that right now, in First Energy’s market territory, it’s not going to be available until things settle down. Once it does, we’ll probably look to see if getting back into a pool still makes sense. But right now it’s just a matter of riding out that transition and keeping ourselves above water while all the regulations shake down.
“We’re spending $800,000 on energy and power, so we take every single indicator to heart. And the bottom line, when we’re saving $80,000, is that our strategy seems to be working when we keep those factors in mind. We originally abandoned our fixed price strategy for energy buying using a blended strategy. But now that the market’s at a six year low; maybe it’s time to start locking in again. Who’s going to blame you for locking in at a six year low? You’re paying less now than you were in 2005.”
Cranberry’s Emergency Medical Service buys a new ambulance
Ambulances, like the people they carry, eventually get old and feeble and break down. But unlike their passengers, ambulances can be traded in and traded up. That’s what’s happening with one of the Cranberry Ambulance Corps more senior vehicles. After 5 years and over 130,000 miles, the ambulance is being exchanged for a new one with several welcome improvements. And it’s scheduled to be delivered this month.
“We’re actually switching the type of ambulance we’re going to be providing,” Ambulance Corps Executive Director Steve Tedesco explained. “There are three types of ambulances. We currently have Type 3 ambulances, which are a van chassis with a box on the back. What we’re switching to is a Type 1 ambulance, which is a pickup truck chassis with a box on it. It has a Ford F-450 chassis, so it’s designed for that sort of workload versus a van chassis which is not really designed as a truck.
“It will have four-wheel drive, and it has an air ride suspension on the back; as soon as you open the back doors, the rear end actually drops down, allowing crews to put the patient into the back without having to strain their backs by lifting,” he said.
“The height from the ground to the ambulance floor is normally between 32 and 40 inches. That may not sound like a lot, but when you’ve got a heavy patient to get inside, that’s a lot of lifting. The air ride suspension actually drops the back of the ambulance so you can load the stretcher in and go,” Tedesco said. “Lowering the height reduces the risk of back injuries. We want to provide the safest emergency medical practices, and that includes preventing back injuries to our staff.
“It’s going to be the first time the Ambulance Corps will have an ambulance like this. So we’re anxious to see how this truck is going to enhance our current fleet. If it does, chances are we’re eventually going change them all over.”
Unlike fire trucks, which are typically designed down to the last detail by their buyers, this particular ambulance had already been largely designed and built by its dealer for show purposes. “We were able to intercept some of the specifications to get what we wanted versus what they were going to do,” Tedesco said. “But the clinical abilities of the Type 1 vehicle are no different. When you get in the back of the ambulance, it’s going to look pretty much the same as the other ambulances. It’s just the exterior appearance that’s difference. There will be a little more space, but nothing of tremendous value.”
The sticker price for the Corps’ new ambulance came to a hefty $137,000. But that was before some intense negotiations, low-interest financing, and help from the Township in securing rebates brought it down to a final price of $110,400. “We will be conducting a residential donation drive coming up in May and we’re hoping to raise money so that we can purchase another new ambulance next year,” he said. It will replace one of our current ambulances that’s 12 years old and has over 180,000 miles on it.”
Cranberry’s Fire Police are given a car of their own
For the first time in its history, the Cranberry Township Fire Police – a specialized eight-member unit of the Volunteer Fire Company – now has its own designated vehicle.
Fire Police, who are charged with safeguarding first responders at the scene of an incident as well as keeping unsuspecting motorists from entering the site of an emergency, previously had only their personal vehicles, typically with a rotating blue light stuck on the roof, to use in getting to the scene. Problem was, they also had to bring along a ton of equipment – cones, flares, signs, and so on – to use in alerting traffic. And that pretty much filled up their cars.
Fire Company President Bruce Hezlep, who began his service as fire policeman, remembers it well. “These guys were putting it all into their personal vehicles, but then when you want to go out to dinner with your family, you have to pull everything out and then later put it all back in. It’s a nuisance and it adds wear and tear to the vehicle. So if we can get our new fire police vehicle to the scene first with all the equipment, and get it all staged and set up, the other officers who come in their personal vehicles can assist, but they won’t have to worry about carrying all that equipment.”
Moving that equipment to the scene became even more of a burden after Hezlep’s tour with the fire police concluded. New requirements for equipment and signage were enacted in 2008. Depending upon the duration of the incident, specific markers now need to be placed at 500, 1,000 and 1,500-foot intervals from the incident. They include Stop signs, Slow signs, at least three 48-inch fold-out warning signs, and a minimum of 26 cones in the event of a highway fatality. That’s just for one direction; if both directions have to be shut down, it’s double. And that still doesn’t include the fire police officer’s personal gear – vests, flashlights, boots, jumpsuits, radios and so forth.
So earlier this year, the Cranberry police department donated a gently-used Ford Crown Victoria to become the first official fire police vehicle. Its nighttime station rotates among the homes of fire police members throughout the week. “We have what we call an Alarm Crew response,” Fire Chief Bill Spiegel explained. “There’s a crew on standby from ten at night to five in the morning, Mondays through Fridays. We have a fire police officer who is given the duty car each night. The car is rotated among the fire police so that each officer gets it one night a week. The fire police captain has it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, then he takes it back to the Haine Station where one of his crew members picks it up on Monday.”
Ironically, the car’s first official use was actually outside of Cranberry, in neighboring Marshall Township, where Cranberry Fire volunteers were brought in as a Mutual Aid company.
“They had a guy holed up in a house on a Saturday night in Marshall Township,” firefighter Mark Nanna recalled. “It was the first weekend the car was in service.” Marshall Township’s own Volunteer Fire Company had been called to provide traffic control because police were thinking about using a tear gas assault. But the incident took place during the fire company’s annual dinner, so Cranberry was summoned and its fire police car was sent in to shut down the road. The next day, WPXI’s website home page showed a picture of Cranberry’s Fire Police car in all its glory.
Even with the Crown Vic’s cavernous trunk space, not all of the mandated equipment can fit the fire police car. The balance is carried on the fire trucks. Even so, the car is a major asset to the Fire Company’s arsenal. “It has much more lighting and it’s much safer for our fire police officers,” Spiegel pointed out. “We’ll put it the furthest away from the accident scene to slow people down. As the other fire police arrive, they’ll come in closer to the scene so they’re not putting their personal vehicles in harm’s way. It looks just like a police car, only it’s decaled like our Incident Command vehicles. It’s got strobes, stripes and LEDs. If you can’t see it, you’ve got problems.”
Firemen rescue cat but prefer to rescue people
Cranberry firefighters Jeff Gooch and Paul Pesanka take their work seriously and spend a great deal of time preparing for emergencies. But then, some emergencies are more serious than others. Take the case of Jack, the cat who managed to find his way inside the living room wall of his owners just as a surprise birthday party for Paul was about to take place.
“It wasn’t really an emergency,” Gooch acknowledged. “We don’t normally do cats in trees. But there’s a cat in the wall and we had to cut a hole and find this cat that had fallen behind the fireplace because it somehow got into the rafters. It was a legitimate call; these people did not know where the cat was or how to get it out, so they called the fire department.”
Eventually, the two men were able to locate the cat and retrieve him, but it came at a price. “We were late for the party because we were getting a cat out of the wall and nobody believed us at first,” Gooch recalled. “So we brought along some pictures we took of ourselves with the cat.” Soon, all was forgiven and the party began in earnest.
But most of the calls that take the first responders into their community are memorable for other reasons, both good and bad. “The ones that stick out are usually for reasons you don’t want to remember but can’t forget,” Pesanka observed. “But there are other calls where you realize we did a great job and really made a difference.”
For years, the two good friends have led parallel lives. Both were fifth grade classmates in Haine Elementary School back in the early ‘90s. Both now work as computer technicians. Both recently married. Both just acquired their own first homes. And both were elected to Fire Company offices for the first time this year.
When he was just eight years old, Gooch told his mother he was going to become a fireman when he grew up. She replied that before he could, he’d have to graduate from high school. “So I graduated from high school and less than a month later, I was standing here at the fire station with an application in my hand,” he said.
Later, as a student at BC3, Gooch was frequently available to answer calls during daylight hours – typically the most difficult time for volunteer fire companies to assemble a crew. “I was 19 or 20 years old and I would come out on the calls as long as I wasn’t in class,” he said.
“I had opportunities to respond to house fires, car fires, accidents with entrapment, multiple injuries. More often than not I was doing it for the first time. I was the young guy, so I got pushed right to the front. What really shaped me was being able to do so much. I learn something at every fire. It’s a new experience every time. Last year we had 607 calls.”
Today, Gooch holds the position of Second Lieutenant in the fire brigade – the Fire Company’s field operations side – where he is responsible for directing the fire crew’s response to an emergency. He is also trained as an emergency medical technician – a certification used while employed as a medical helicopter dispatcher in West Mifflin.
Pesanka, who went to college at Pitt’s Johnstown campus after high school, wasn’t able to join the fire company until after his return to Cranberry in 2005. He was recently elected to the Fire Company’s Board of Directors and also holds Vehicle Rescue Technician and Firefighter One certifications. Some of it may be hereditary.
“My grandfather was a fire chief in Ingram and my uncle as was also a firefighter,” he acknowledged. “We want to help the public as much we can.”
News Briefs
Public Works crews vigilant for road damage. Members of Cranberry’s Public Works department are keeping an eye out for telltale cracks, breaks, and potholes in local roads. The department is the new home for a recently-acquired piece of pavement repair equipment which is being shared by the municipalities belonging to the Butler County Council of Governments. In a single pass, the propane-driven, trailer-mounted unit cleans, fills, and seals cracks in asphalt road surfaces, potentially extending their life by years.
Cranberry and school district form recycling partnership. Students are among America’s most committed believers in recycling. But putting that belief into practice was not possible for students in Seneca Valley’s Cranberry Township schools until this year. Now, as the result of partnership between the Township and School District, classrooms in the Haine and Rowan schools have been outfitted with blue recycling bins which are emptied weekly by Waste Management.
Community Days celebration to expand this year. Cranberry Township Community Chest, CTCC, is ratcheting up the scale of Community Days this summer. The three-day event, July 8-10, will double the size of the carnival which was featured for the first time last year. It will also include treasure hunts with multiple winners, an expanded arts and crafts booth section, and a return of the popular car cruise. The entire event is focused on raising awareness, membership, and funds for more than two dozen nonprofit and civic organizations operating in Cranberry.
Cranberry Township employment application is now online. Anyone seeking employment with Cranberry Township should now apply through the Township website,
www.cranberrytownship.org/employment. Traditional paper applications will no longer be accepted. Right now, the Township is looking for seasonal employees to staff its summer programs and facilities including the WaterPark, Cranberry Highlands, Camp Cranberry and park maintenance. But openings for all positions, including full-time jobs, will be posted at the same address.
Golf course adds new tees. Cranberry Highlands Golf Course is growing again. New back tees are being added to holes 5, 8, and 12 this season. Those tees on holes 5 and 8 will open in May; the new hole 12 tee will be available by mid-June. The addition of the new tees will stretch the course of play to over 6,500 yards.
Don’t hide your hydrant. Cranberry Township Public Works and Fire Company members like their fire hydrants to stand out, so painting, planting, and masonry that obscures them is a no-no. You can put crushed stone around the hydrant’s base to keep grass from growing around it, but keep any trees, shrubs or flowers at least five feet away from either side and at least two feet away from the back of the hydrant.
Local resident and company honored. Cranberry Township Community Chest and The Chamber of Commerce have named Cathy Cortazzo, founder of the Cranberry CUP Tournament, and Mine Safety Appliances Company as their 2010 Person and Company of the year, respectively. Legacy endowments to benefit local nonprofit organizations have been established in their honor.
Cranberry WaterPark membership discounts available. The Cranberry Township Community WaterPark will open for the summer season on Saturday, May 29 – the first day of the long Memorial Day weekend. Discounts on membership are still available if you act before the end of April. Cranberry residents are eligible for even deeper discounts.
School district encourages students toward engineering. A groundbreaking high school certification program in engineering is being implemented in the Seneca Valley School District. The initiative, which is designed to help improve students’ understanding of engineering careers and applications, has been given an official endorsement from Cranberry’s Board of Supervisors as well as by several other communities in the district. Companies that employ engineers are being solicited to help out by hosting field trips, job shadowing, mentoring, internships, guest speaking, and scholarship opportunities.
Discount on property tax is available. Your 2010 County/Township real estate taxes can still be paid at a two percent discount until April 30. After that, taxes are due at face value through the end of June. If you missed payment on your 2009 County/Township/School District property tax, contact the Butler County Tax Claim Bureau at 724-284-5326 to make arrangements. If you changed your mortgage company or are no longer using an escrow account to pay your property taxes, stop by tax collector P.J. Lynd’s Municipal Center office or call 724-776-1103.
Classes in life-saving techniques are available. Save a life. The Cranberry Ambulance Corps is offering quarterly training sessions in CPR and AED at their base on Thomson Park Drive. The classes are open to the public for a fee of $20. The Corps also runs first aid classes on an as-needed basis. Anyone interested can call 724-776-4480 to get on the list for upcoming classes.
Remembering Granddad. Cranberry resident Colleen Hroncich, granddaughter of the late Pittsburgh Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh, will be autographing copies of her grandfather’s biography, The Whistling Irishman, a remembrance she wrote over the last two years and initially released at the ball club’s Florida training camp this past St. Patrick’s Day. The book signing will be held at the Cranberry Public Library on Saturday, May 8 from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. Former Pirates pitcher and current broadcast team announcer Steve Blass, who wrote the book’s forward, will also be on hand.
Track Your Energy Use Online. A website that provides a dashboard to monitor your utility use and compare it to similar structures in this region is available free of charge to Cranberry residents and households in the Seneca Valley School District. The online tool, developed by GreenQuest, is designed to raise awareness of energy use. It can also help users spot utility bill errors, measure a building’s carbon footprint, and demonstrate the impact of weather on electric and gas consumption. Cranberry Township and Seneca Valley are partners in promoting resource conservation.
Cranberry Parks and Recreation department receives a grant for planning
A state grant to support a joint parks master plan for Cranberry Township and Butler County has been awarded by Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The grant will be used to engage consultants in the development of a plan for public parks, trails, greenways, open space and leisure resources over a ten-year period.
The process will include a well-structured opportunity for Township planners, under the direction of of Chief Strategic Planning Officer John Trant, Jr., to learn what residents think needs to be added or enhanced over that time. The Township’s initial park master plan was last updated in 1997, and essentially everything it visualized has now been completed.
“There will be public sessions where we hear the community’s ideas that we can categorize as our first choice and need, as our second choice and need, and so on, down the line,” Parks & Recreation Director Mike Diehl explained. The previous plan had more than 15 specific items including the Skatepark, additional ballfields and parklands.
“We’ll be the listeners, letting people have their say. Then we’ll take that feedback and mold it into a doable plan,” he said. But there are limits. “You need to go with the community’s needs. That’s why you plan and prioritize. It would be great if we could do all those things, but we’re living on a budget, too,” Diehl said.
At the same time though, there can be opportunities for new projects that the 10-year plan may not visualize. “It doesn’t say those are the only things you can do,” he said. “Ten years is a long time. For example, in 1997, nobody thought of building a dog park. But it became a trend throughout the country and picked up steam here, so we were able to add that to the mix along with help from the community. So a plan is a guideline – it’s not an absolute.
“Demographically, Cranberry is a very young community: lots of children and young families. So the question is: will it remain young? And when is a changeover going to happen?” he asks. “We’ll see trends over these ten-year cycles that we can adjust to.”
Cranberry Township’s 25-year comprehensive plan adopted in 2009 already includes a Parks and Recreation component. But the two are not in conflict. “The Cranberry Plan will be our jumping-off point. It’s taking that 25 years and prioritizing the first ten,” he noted. “After that, we’ll re-prioritize what’s left and whatever’s new, because you can’t envision everything over 25 years.
“At the same time, there are things I don’t think will change other than to be more and more in demand. That includes the long-discussed walkway and trailway system that can get you from Point A to Point B in Cranberry – from your home to a business, to a restaurant, to a park – without getting in your vehicle and driving, so you can walk, ride a bicycle, or whatever. And a part of this next study will be how we can make that happen.”
“During the long-range planning process, our residents made clear that there was a need for a comprehensive greenways network in the Township as well as plan a to protect open space,” Trant pointed out. “Already, as a result of our open space requirements for new development, park land acquisition, and farmland preservation, more than 2,000 acres of open space in Cranberry is now protected. And we will be seeking out additional conservation opportunities to create a network of open space that provides public access.”
Cranberry Township water lines to be checked for leaks
If you see a man wearing headphones, appearing to listen intently to a fire hydrant in your neighborhood, don’t be alarmed; he’s not a madman; he’s there listening for water music – and not the composition by George Frideric Handel, either. The Township is actually paying him to do it. And it’s saving big bucks in the process. Here’s why:
In 2008, Cranberry bought 897 million gallons of water from the West View Water Authority. That same year, it sold 757 million gallons to Cranberry’s water customers. That leaves 140 million gallons unaccounted for. It sounds like a lot, and it is. But at as a percent of the total, it’s only about half the average for municipal water suppliers, and it’s way less than some of the older communities around Pittsburgh which lose as much as half their water through leaky pipes. It results from a number of causes.
In Cranberry’s case, as in most communities, some of that water loss is legitimate: flushing out the water lines, fighting fires, and system maintenance for example. Altogether, they represent 8 to 10 million gallons of the Township’s total.
Another part is from malfunctioning meters, particularly the large commercial kind that handle tens of thousands of gallons a day. If they fall out of calibration – which happens over time – it can mean a lot of water isn’t being accounted for. So Cranberry has a program to test each commercial meter every two years and to replace it if needed. That’s saved the Township a lot of money.
But the most significant, and most easily remedied sources of water loss are leaks from underground pipes in the distribution system. A hole just 1/8 inch in diameter can result in 3,288 gallons of water lost every day – or about 1.2 million gallons a year. That’s over $6,500 at current rates – money that all of the system’s ratepayers are having to make up for in their water bills. It represents about nine percent of all the water Cranberry buys.
For some time now, Cranberry has hired a contractor to come in during the late summer months with a sophisticated listening device to pinpoint leaks all along the 170 miles of pipeline in its system. Different types of leaks make different types of noises, and every year that he’s listened for those telltale sounds, he’s discovered leaks that total hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost water. As a result, the Township decided to hire him do his inspections twice a year – early spring as well as late summer. So now, a leak which develops in a water line somewhere will never have more than six months to wait before it’s discovered and repaired.
Most of this spring’s water leak survey work is being conducted between 7:00 AM and 4:00 PM, weekdays. It includes roadways and Township right-of-ways, as well as private properties. Everyone involved in the project carries a Township ID. If a leak sound is heard on someone’s private water service line, that resident may be approached by a member of the survey team with a request for access to verify whether the leak is inside their home. If it is, the customer can contact their own plumber to do the repairs.
Cranberry takes inventory of its traffic signs
The signs are everywhere. Traffic advisory signs, warning signs, regulatory signs, informational signs, marker signs, and so on. In fact sometimes they accumulate to the point where a driver who isn’t already familiar with that particular stretch of roadway can become overwhelmed.
So how many roadside signs are there in Cranberry? And whose responsibility are they? For the moment, at least, nobody really knows for sure. However every sign has a limited useful life and, at some point, each of them will need to be removed, replaced, or revised.
To find out where they stand, Public Works crews have begun February to take a systematic inventory of the thousands of official signs posted along Township roads. For starters, they’re cataloguing only the Township’s signs; as a rule of thumb, streets with a posted speed limit of under 35 miles an hour are Cranberry’s responsibility; those 35 and above are the state’s.
Not long after they got started, however, bad weather hit and snow removal became the department’s top priority, so the sign inventory was put on ice. But by early March, crews were out once again with GPS equipment to record the exact location of each sign, what it says, and how easy it is to read.
At least in Cranberry, legibility is more than just a judgment call; it’s determined using a tool that the Township bought in tandem with other members of its local Council of Governments to measure each sign’s reflectivity. If it’s faded, it flunks the test and has to be replaced or taken down.
Part of the impetus for the project was Cranberry’s effort to catalog its capital assets – a financial accounting mandate that began with the Township’s water and sewer system, and has now extended to include its traffic signs. Another part was a federal mandate concerning legible road signs that provides a timetable for states and local governments to get their acts together.
But there’s also a local motivation. “We have thousands of street name signs out there,” Public Works Director Jason Dailey pointed out. “In updating these street signs, we want to know where they’re located, how many of them are out there, and what it’s going to cost us to do a full-blown replacement.”
It also helps when someone has an accident that knocks down a sign – a regular occurrence in the Township. The department has work orders at the ready, including billable rates by sign size and type, to file with the driver’s insurance company for reimbursement.
“Right now we’re out collecting that information, and putting it all into a spreadsheet with asset ID numbers,” Dailey said. Once collected, the data will allow Public Works to quickly replace signs which have been knocked down, damaged, or stolen. It digitizes every sign so the data will always be available to move from one generation of signs to the next. But it will also help local officials formulate better policies about determining which signs are warranted in the first place.
“When someone comes in and says ‘we would like a Deer Crossing sign,’ what would actually warrant a Deer Crossing sign?, Dailey asks. “What we’re trying to do is have a uniform response for those types of requests. So, for example, when a plan starts up a neighborhood watch program and posts a block watch sign, we want to have a policy in place that follows up on an annual basis to find out if it’s still warranted: is the block watch group still operating?
“Rather than having the sign pollution that occurs on neighborhood roadways where you see fifty signs and can’t read any of them, we’re coming up with a warrant list to help limit that type of proliferation. It’s in the draft phase right now,” he said.
Long-range municipal planning provides important benefits
Long-range municipal planning provides important benefits
By John Skorupan, Chairman, Cranberry Township Board of Supervisors
This month marks the first-year anniversary of The Cranberry Plan – the Township’s 25-year comprehensive plan. Work on implementing the Plan’s 200-plus recommendations is now well underway, and pieces of legislation required to guide future growth in Cranberry have already been enacted.
I’ve had very good feedback on that plan from our local residents. But what many find surprising is that some of the people who appreciate it most are actually developers. The reason is that having a lucid vision with clear guidelines in place is tremendously helpful in focusing on projects that fit the sort of community our Plan contemplates.
By making plain which sorts of development Cranberry will accept in a particular area of town and which types it won’t, the time required to turn a project around is significantly shorter. To a developer, time is money because the cost of taking out options on property for a proposed development is directly related to how long those options need to remain in place. So unless a developer is being deliberately dense, or operates in the mistaken belief that our zoning and permitting processes are political rather than professional, good projects can move ahead quickly and bad ones die.
Now I realize that not every community has made a priority of creating a 25-year plan. But I am convinced that every community needs to have some sort of plan in place to address unexpected growth. If a megastore decides to parachute into a small community, unless there’s some sort of plan in place, it can lead to serious road issues, sewage issues, safety issues, and all sorts of other problems. You can’t have successful development in a community that’s failing; their fortunes are bound together, and that shared destiny needs to be anticipated in an official plan.
Even so, there are those who buy into the ideology that government can’t do anything right and that municipal planning and zoning takes away people’s rights. Sometimes they get pretty vocal about it. Well, the fact is that in most cases, land use controls actually expand people’s rights and protect the value of their property – values which could quickly vanish by allowing dangerous or inappropriate property uses to set up shop next door.
At the same time, though, a lot can happen in 25 years. For starters, by 2030, the population of Cranberry will have experienced substantial turnover; the people around at that time will have different needs, wants and circumstances to deal with than those who are here today. We may become an older community. Our ethnic profile might shift. The economy will change. And so will all the technologies that affect our lives. Just think what it was like as recently as 2000.
As a result, every long-range plan needs to be revisited periodically, reassessed from time to time, and include enough flexibility to accommodate innovation and shifting circumstances. That’s why in crafting The Cranberry Plan, we made use of overlays and form-based building codes to give us the flexibility to stay on top of changing needs while keeping our longer vision on course.
So the 25-year horizon of The Cranberry Plan should not be thought of as some sort of shackle that will keep us from responding to change during that time. Instead, it is a way of coordinating the aspirations of our residents, businesses, and elected officials in setting priorities on the use of Township resources. And it is a powerful tool for helping the region’s commercial developers understand what kind of place Cranberry is striving to become and to create the projects that will allow us to fulfill that vision.
Cranberry is planning to add a second main sewer line
Interceptor One, Cranberry’s largest sewer line, gathers wastewater from neighborhood collector lines in the 178 mile system and delivers it to the Township’s sewage treatment plant. That line is now 40 years old. And a lot has happened since it was first laid out along the Brush Creek stream bed, when Cranberry had a population of fewer than 5,000.
Today, Cranberry has close to 30,000 residents and its comprehensive plan anticipates expanding over the next 25 years to around 50,000. Matching the Township’s infrastructure to its growth trajectory requires a series of planned improvements over time. So a second interceptor line is being planned for installation along a parallel alignment, with work beginning as soon as next year.
Most of the new line, which was designed by consulting engineers, falls inside property or rights of way already owned by the Township. However, because of new environmental requirements enacted since 1970, the new line will not follow the current one throughout its entire length, so minor property acquisitions may be needed.
The new sewer line will not replace the older one; both will remain in operation. Having both lines in service will make it possible to shift the flow from one to the other for maintenance purposes.
Engineering plans for the new line have been submitted to Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection for approval. Applications have also been prepared for all of the other agencies required to issue permits associated with the new line’s construction. And grant applications have been submitted to state and federal agencies which could potentially finance as much as half the project’s $5.4 million cost. Actual construction of the project will be phased to match the funding that becomes available.
A separate grant application has been submitted to expand the Township’s primary fresh water supply line and its pump station in Thorn Hill Industrial Park.
Parent-Teacher organizations help Seneca Valley Schools
By Linda Andreassi, Communications Director, Seneca Valley School District
Spring is a welcome sight for most educators.
Students can get outside – finally! – for recess, free to run, jump, play and socialize with friends.
But despite the record snow falls, frigid temperatures and blowing winds this past winter, months of indoor recess weren’t so bad for Rowan Elementary students, according to Dr. John Giancola, principal.
“We’ve had many indoor recess days due to the snow, so the PTA allotted funds for each classroom to buy games and toys for use during indoor recess,” he said. “These games have made our recess much more enjoyable.”
Thanks to the Rowan Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), the Parent-Teacher Organizations (PTO) at Evans City, Connoquenessing Valley, and Haine, and the Seneca Valley Middle School Very Important Parent (VIP) Group, students and teachers in the district’s K-8 schools have extra opportunities, like famous author visits, available to them due to the generous time and energy of committed parents.
Officers and members of these groups spend countless hours at the buildings at all times of the day and night, as well as weekends, sponsoring carnival fund raisers, organizing Market Day pick ups, or scheduling special sales events.
Earlier this year, members of the Rowan PTA even spearheaded the schools’ Help for Haiti campaign, raising $6,700 was for the American Red Cross. In addition to teaching valuable lessons to students through these efforts, the PTA/PTOs are also supporting the larger Cranberry Community with programs such as Caring Trees.
“I can't imagine our schools or communities without the PTA,” Dr. Giancola said. “They are an integral part of everything we do!”
Annually, the groups can raise thousands and thousands of dollars, but not just through fund raising efforts. Committee chairs in each group encourage parents to clip box tops, collect labels, purchase spirit wear or register at local retail centers for a percentage of the profits. And because of these efforts, special assemblies, field trips, family fun events, book fairs, and carnivals take place. The bonus is that these events are always done with a cadre of help and donations from parents and kids alike.
Yvonne Kumpfmiller, co-president of the Haine PTO, said the experience allows her the opportunity to work with parents “in a team effort along side dedicated teachers and administrators to enrich the lives and education of all 1,500 students attending both Haine Schools. These are opportunities for parents, students and teachers to interact in a less formal atmosphere and just enjoy getting to know each other better.”
In addition, these volunteer groups are always the first to provide volunteers for many school events, including kindergarten registration, extra lunch and bus supervision for the first week of school, and special events such as field day.
“I enjoy interacting with the kids, working with other parents and accomplishing things that truly make a difference,” said Tiffany Ashbaugh, co-president of the Rowan PTA.
But don’t be mistaken. These parents aren’t novices at this.
The Haine PTO recently acquired non-profit status to apply for and receive grants that are currently only available to organizations which have a 501(c)3 tax exemption. This will enable the PTO to provide even more assistance with the school than they would be able to do otherwise.
“Grants will not replace the traditional fundraising efforts but will help enhance the environment of both Haine schools,” said Kumpfmiller. “The PTO hopes to continue to strive to make Haine a wonderful, safe place to teach, learn and grow.”
And we here in the Seneca Valley School District are so very happy to have you. Thank you!
Technology company TrueCommerce moves to Cranberry
Its offices have that just-moved-in look. Pictures and plaques have yet to be hung. Lots of rooms remain unfurnished. Signs are propped up on chairs. But the bright and airy space is just right for its newest tenant. After ten years of laboring in a cramped Wexford office, the management of TrueCommerce, Inc. – a technology company focused on moving business data between retailers and their suppliers – has found that the amenities of Cranberry Woods offer a perfect fit for their company’s evolving needs, ambitions, and culture.
Since the beginning of February, when TrueCommerce first moved into its fourth floor office space, its 80 employees have continued the work of refining their company’s software and delivering professional services to customers throughout the United States. At the same time, though, they have been working on strategies to expand their business to clients worldwide and to industries beyond retail. It’s a huge market and a tremendous opportunity.
That’s because if you run a small- to mid-size company and hope to supply merchandise to any of America’s largest retailers, you’ll need to make some changes in the way you do business. One of the biggest is the requirement that you conduct your transactions electronically – purchase orders, shipping documents, invoices, payment, accounting, and so on.
There’s even a term for it: Electronic Data Interchange, or EDI – a U.S. technical standard used in transferring documents from one company’s computer system for processing in another’s. It goes beyond normal email which is primarily for messages sent from one person to be read by another.
Problem is, most small businesses don’t know how to connect their accounting systems – which are typically built on consumer software from office supply stores – into the industrial-strength systems of the Wal-Marts and Lowe’s and Home Depots of the world. It involves transmitting, translating, and integrating sensitive information between the two in a secure and reliable fashion. And that requires customer training as well as 24/7 technical support throughout the entire process.
Meeting that need has been the focus of privately-held TrueCommerce since its start in 1995. With customers throughout the United States and the unique ability to provide them with advice and technology at each step along the way, True Commerce has helped companies with as few as two people to effectively compete against, and sell to, the giants.
But now, with fifteen years under its belt, a healthy portfolio of clients and partners, plenty of working capital, and a promising business outlook, a subtle shift has taken place in the company’s culture from its scrappy startup days. “We’re self-sustaining, profitable, growing, and cash flow positive,” President and CEO Nicholas Manolis reflected recently. “We have a very patient group of investors, so part of our move was to redefine who we are. We’re putting a lot of capital into doing everything we can to create a Best-Place-to-Work environment. We’re constantly thinking of new things to make this a fun place to work.
“That’s really what’s behind the move to Cranberry Woods – we’re reinventing ourselves. And your physical presence, your address, has a lot to do with it. We decided it was time we got a more professional working environment and give back to the employees some of the simple things we had not necessarily been paying attention to as we were growing up.
“We polled our employees about a year and a half ago. We said we could either stay where we were and do some major construction, or we could move. We asked: what do you think would make this a great place to work? And practically everybody responded. We knew we had to do something different to provide a work environment that was conducive to productivity, employee satisfaction, and collaboration. So last summer we started looking around and fell upon this. It’s convenient; once you get off the highway, you’re just five minutes from here. It really has a lot of positives. We are truly excited about our new space in the Township.”
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