Township manages to grow half-dozen managers
Something about growing up in Shaler Township makes people want to make the most of neighborhoods. Just ask the six managers of nearby towns who keep local governments running efficiently and under budget.
This surprising statistic was discovered through North Hills Council of Government meetings. The North Hills COG comprises 19 Allegheny County municipalities, the result of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1972. By working together, these communities can save money by bidding, buying and applying for grants to meet shared goals and objectives.
One unexpected result of their intergovernmental cooperation was discovering many shared the same roots.
At one of the final public meetings this year, Shaler Township Manager Tim Rogers mentioned this coincidence among the group. “Everyone at the meeting was talking about their hometowns,” he said, “and I realized six people were from Shaler.”
He credits Shaler’s high school curriculum. “We had really good social studies teachers who placed a lot of emphasis on civics and history.” There’s also a strong sense of community in the township. “A lot of people who grew up here seem to stay here.”
After graduating from Shaler Area High in 1971, Mr. Rogers became a metal trade journeyman while taking college courses. He received a degree from Duquesne Law School in 1991 and began practicing law, eventually becoming the assistant corporate counsel at the former Contraves Inc., an electronics manufacturer in RIDC park in O’Hara Township. He came home to Shaler in 1992 as the township manager.
His 28-year role as manager was not his first experience with the Shaler government, however. Mr. Rogers became the youngest township commissioner at age 19, serving on the board for four years. He credits his predecessors Bill Crawford and Jeffrey Przygocki with inspiring him. “Bill was the manager when I was a commissioner,” Mr. Rogers said. “He influenced two or three of our local managers.”
He also commends the township’s officials. “There’s no politics here. They’re working for what’s best for the community.”
He and other area municipal managers meet regularly at North Hills Council of Government meetings and sometimes gather socially. Hampton Township Manager Chris Lochner and his wife, Janet, have become personal friends.
Mr. Lochner was in the first graduating class from the current high school building in 1976. The intermediate school on Mount Royal Boulevard was once the high school. Small high schools in Etna and Reserve Township and Millvale merged with Shaler’s high school in 1971, creating graduating classes of more than 1,000 students. To accommodate the large population, a new building was constructed in the 1970s.
In the meantime, administrators divided the school day into two sessions because not everyone could fit into the old building. This gave students the chance to take college prep courses and
attend Beatty Tech.
“It was an advantage. It helped me prepare for college,” Mr. Lochner said. “My mother was a teacher. She worked very hard to get us into Shaler.”
He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in urban studies and geography in 1981 and a master’s in public administration in 1982. “I had always wanted to be a city planner,” he said, crediting Hank Ann, his professor of political science, with his transfer to the college. “Of course, my teacher at Shaler High School, Dave Shutter, would say that he was the guy.” Now retired from teaching, Mr. Shutter is the president of the Shaler Township commissioners.
Mr. Lochner’s connections served him well, too. While at Pitt, he reconnected with his Shaler prom date, Janet Butkovac, the woman who would become his wife.
Professionally, Mr. Lochner first worked for the city of Pittsburgh, then Wilkinsburg, Upper St. Clair and McCandless Township. It was while he was Edgewood’s borough manager in 1986 he was recruited to Hampton Township, where he’s been ever since. “It’s been a great experience,” he said, pointing out the many building projects he has overseen, including the public works garage, the baseball complex, pool and community center.
In Fox Chapel Borough, Gary Koehler grew up in Shaler, graduated from Shaler Area High School in 1978 and received his degree in urban regional and planning from Penn State in 1982.
He credits his college adviser with his career choice. “When I attended Shaler, it had a split schedule to accommodate the large student body before the new school was opened,” he said. “So I was fortunate to be able to attend Beatty Tech and still take the college prep classes at school.”
Though he entered Penn State planning to continue studying architectural drafting design as he did at Beatty, he soon learned he was most interested in managing municipalities.
Mr. Koehler started as the zoning and code officer with the township of Pine, moving on to assistant manager and manager during his 23-year tenure. When the opportunity to become Fox Chapel’s borough manager opened up, he knew his experience with park acquisition and development of Pine Park would serve him well in his new post. Currently, he, other administrators and council are in the midst of adding the Hardie property to the borough’s park complex.
Another 1978 graduate of Shaler Area High School, Rege Ebner manages Franklin Park Borough. “I was an accountant by trade,” he said, having followed up high school by earning a business degree from Duquesne University in 1982 and a master’s of business administration from the University of Pittsburgh in 1984.
“I’m honored to join my brotherhood of Shaler,” he said. While he knew Mr. Koehler, of Fox Chapel, when they were students together, “I was surprised to find so many of us in this field came from the same place.”
After working several years in Cleveland, Mr. Ebner returned to Pittsburgh in 1997, working as the finance director and assistant manager of McCandless Township for 20 years, focusing on a long-term capital improvement program.
Upon moving to Franklin Park, he found himself in a unique situation. Flooding and runoff from roads onto local properties and from one property to another has become a problem in the Pine Creek watershed, he said. He and the council are focusing on the matter in Zoom meetings.
Even across the Allegheny River in Oakmont, a Shaler native sits at the helm of borough administration. Scot Fodi said growing up in the township had everything to do with he and his peers becoming municipal managers.
“Shaler was known for good management,” he said. He was greatly influenced by Bill Crawford, who managed the township through the rough waters of the 1970s, when balancing the books required some creative planning, as well as raising taxes. “He set the township on the road to progress. You can see that in Shaler today,” Mr. Fodi said.
Mr. Fodi grew up in the Cherry City section of Shaler, where he’s still an active member of the fire department. He graduated from North Catholic High in 1988 and from Penn State in 1992 with a degree in public services. He said he adheres to guidelines he learned while attaining his International City Managers’ Association credentials, a national group that provides education and networking for local government management.
He said he started his “public adventure” as a building inspector in Pine in 1995, graduated to code enforcement officer in 2003 and then left to be the public works officer and community planner in Middlesex Township in Butler County. There he focused on building the largest sewer project in the Saxonburg, Penn, Middlesex and Jefferson townships area: the Saxonburg Area Authority. “We quadrupled the customer base,” he said of the large, state-funded project that gave most residents access to public water and sewage.
From there, he did a fiveyear stint in Penn Township in Westmoreland County as the public works director until 2019 when he joined the Oakmont administration, where he has put his experience using public grants for sewer projects to work rehabilitating the borough’s sewer system, track around Riverside Park and the wall and trail in Creekside Park. Lately, he’s been working with the council to open a kayaking park and beach. It’s still in the permitting stage but might be open as soon as next summer. “It’s fun. It really is,” he said of his job. “I enjoy working with our borough’s volunteers on grassroots efforts.”
Scott Anderson is manager for Pine Township. He graduated from Shaler Area High School in 1972 and went to Pittsburgh Technical College before becoming the township’s code enforcement officer in 1989. “I was not intending to be in government,” he said.
However, when Fox Chapel’s current borough manager, Mr. Koehler, left Pine, Mr. Anderson became the assistant manager, then the manager. “It’s not the same path I was intending to take when I studied architecture and engineering,” he said. “But I found I like code enforcing and land development, so I stuck around.”