After sitting through a 3-3 tie vote in June and the deferral of a decision in July, developer Paul Fischione and his attorney were ready for a vote on their proposal to create 24 “luxury lots” off Wiestertown Road in Murrysville. Attorney Bill Sittig said his client wasn’t interested in receiving a time extension until mid-September to wait for a full complement of council to vote. Council members Matthew Olszewski and Mac McKenna were both absent at council’s recent meeting.
“Their absence doesn’t change things,” Sittig said. “We have everybody in the room we need in order to vote tonight.” Fischione had initially come before council in early 2023, with a request to rezone the rural-residential property to accommodate 28 lots.
That request was denied, and his subsequent proposal for a subdivision has been discussed and tabled several times in 2024. “We came here initially to get a few more houses and that was turned down,” Sittig said. “This is a by-right plan .
That’s strictly a staff review. Staff has reviewed it and we agree with their recommendation of approval. If there’s a vote and council isn’t willing to follow the law, we’ll go to court.
But we have the preeminent property rights here, not the neighbors.” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.
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data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}(); Michael Tometsko, who lives near the proposed entrance across Wiestertown Road, cited concerns about increased traffic along the single-lane road in recent years.
Council President Dayne Dice noted, however, that a 24-lot subdivision “is just not going to move the needle in terms of prompting a denial based on traffic concerns.” Council found itself in a similar situation earlier this year, regarding Caliber Collision’s proposal for an auto body shop on Route 22 property just east of the Manordale Farms neighborhood. Manordale residents largely did not want the shop next door and lamented the loss of nearby wooded property, but as an application which met all of Murrysville’s development ordinances, it was approved.
Discussing council’s role in development, Dice repeated a phrase he used during the Caliber discussion. “We’re not the ‘Lords of Murrysville,’” he said. “We can’t just, on a whim, say this development gets to go in and this one doesn’t.
These are matters of private property rights, and our job is to make sure applications comply with our ordinances.” Council ultimately voted unanimously to approve Fischione’s excavation and development applications. “If it abides by everything, it abides by everything,” said Councilwoman Jamie Lingg.
“But I do think this has brought to our attention how busy Wiestertown Road is in terms of traffic, and hopefully that will be conveyed to residents who are moving in.”.
