Mt. Lebanon commissioner meetings back to in person

Mt. Lebanon commissioners are set to return to in-person meetings in September, but residents and board members will still be able to participate remotely.

At a discussion session meeting on Tuesday, the municipal information technology manager, Nick Schalles, explained how the meeting process will look come September.

“Moving forward, we are going to continue to utilize the Zoom webinar package for the remote portion and the livestream portion,” Mr. Schalles said.

One change residents will notice is starting in September, registration will not be required to remotely attend the Zoom meeting. A public link to watch or participate in the meeting will be posted on the municipal website beforehand. Currently, residents must register for the Zoom meeting, even if they are not making a public comment, and they are sent a unique link to join the meeting.

Once residents are in the Zoom meeting, they will utilize the “raise hand” function if they would like to make a public comment.

Mt. Lebanon’s municipal boards and authorities also will hold their meetings on the same platform, with the remote and in-person options available.

Staff, commissioners and board/authority members also will be able to participate

remotely if they cannot attend in person.

Commissioners at the meeting also voted in favor of more than $500,000 in improvements for the municipal firing range, which has sat unused for more than a year due to sound issues. Commissioners voted, 4-1, to approve contracts totaling $561,200 to install a 3,090-square-foot mechanical penthouse addition to the existing 4,904-squarefoot building.

Commissioners Mindy Ranney, Steve Silverman, Leeann Foster and Andrew Flynn voted in favor of the motion. Craig Grella dissented.

The $1.67 million range off Cedar Boulevard was primarily built for use by Mt. Lebanon’s police department for training purposes.

At a July 13 discussion session meeting, municipal engineer Dan Deiseroth, of Gateway Engineers, said the municipality, sound experts and the facility’s architect, RSSC Architecture, came to an agreement on how to remediate the issue of too much noise being heard outside the building.

The addition of the mechanical penthouse will include metal structural framing, roofing, cement board siding, sound-rated doors, mineral wool soundattenuation panels, perforated metal ceiling panels and painted interior finishes.

The installation of ballistic wall protection in the firing range at a cost of $117,833 by InVeris Training Solutions of Georgia was also approved by the same 4-1 vote as the firing range penthouse.

“The cost of this project in particular has ballooned to a point where I just don’t feel comfortable voting for this,” Mr. Grella said.

The walls will make it possible for police officers to do movement-type drills and not just stationary or static drills as part of their required training. It was noted by commissioners that in 2020, the Pennsylvania Municipal Police Officers Education and Training Commission updated its firearms qualifications requirements to include the dynamic or movement type drills.

Ms. Ranney said she considered the installation of the ballistic wall protection to be a safety issue based on the updated requirements.