Bellevue risks grant for demolition

&emsp;&emsp;When Mike and Jane Braunlich moved their young family into Bellevue in 1994, they may have imagined that someday they would sit on their front porch or play in their back yard with their grandchildren. What they never could have imagined was that those grandchildren might be threatened by a blighted property that has been on the borough's radar for decades, but never addressed due to a variety of circumstances, including some questionable handling of grant funds by borough officials.&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;When the Braunlichs first moved into their new home, the adjacent property at 31 E. Roseridge was still occupied, used as a rental property. It already was in a state of decline and produced a horde of cockroaches that the neighbors had to work to eliminate.&emsp;&emsp; By the late '90s the property was uninhabitable and condemned, and the borough first started to consider it for demolition. According to Jane Braunlich, money was available at the time, but she later learned that the borough's director of administrative services removed the property from the demo list after mistakenly visiting the wrong address.&emsp;&emsp;Over the years, ownership of the property changed several times thanks to a sheriff sale and one owner apparently bequeathing the property to someone who claimed not to want it, according to borough documents. As is common with blighted properties, municipal code enforcement officers find it nearly impossible to hold anyone responsible for conditions at properties that end up as part of an estate that has no money to pay taxes, let alone for renovations.&emsp;&emsp;Then came the virtual disappearance of grant funds to demolish properties, and municipalities found it hard to fit demolition into their budgets.&emsp;&emsp;Meanwhile, the East Roseridge Avenue property continued to decline, as the roof of the property began caving in and the lot was overgrown. Jane Braunlich continued to contact elected officials about the state of the property, even e-mailing all of council in February of 2022. She says she received no response.&emsp;&emsp;Fast-forward to the summer of 2023, and the Braunlichs' youngest grandchild was found, during a routine check-up with his pediatrician, to have high levels of lead in his blood. Lead exposure was not something that had been detected in any of the Braunlichs' own children, or even in their grandson's older sister or cousins. Of course, none of them had been exposed to the latest nuisance from next door, wind blown paint chips from the crumbling exterior.&emsp;&emsp;Jane immediately reached out to the Allegheny County Health Department, which oversees problems with lead-based paint. The response she received from ACHD was very interesting — the health department would not get involved because the property was listed by Bellevue Borough as being on the list of blighted houses due to be demolished. &emsp;&emsp;At that point Braunlich began questioning the borough about the apparent demolition project and obtained a number of documents indicating that Bellevue Borough submitted an application for funds from the Commonwealth Financing Agency's Blight Remediation Program, which falls under the purview of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). The borough requested a grant of $73,666, and promised to provide a 10 percent matching amount of $8,200. That application was submitted on July 28, 2020.&emsp;&emsp;The grant funds were to be used specifically for the demolition of three properties: 31 E. Roseridge, 40 Kendall Ave., and 146 Ridge. All three properties were deemed uninhabitable and were in various stages of tax delinquency. In its application for the grant, Bellevue indicated that once the houses were demolished, the properties would be marketed to neighbors as part of Allegheny County's Vacant Property Recovery Program (VPRP), which allows homeowners to acquire adjacent lots at an extremely low cost as long as they can provide the county with a plan to eliminate the blight as well as proof of their ability to do so.&emsp;&emsp;In its application, Bellevue officials said that it would take some five months to advertise, receive and award bids, and then demolish the buildings, grade the property if necessary, and reseed it. The timeline included a generous 14 weeks for the bidding process, and two weeks for the actual demolition work.&emsp;&emsp;Bellevue was awarded a grant of $61,630 on May 25, 2021. The borough was given two years to complete the work and receive reimbursement from the CFA. &emsp;&emsp;Although Braunlich was told by another borough administrative employee that the grant was good through June of 2024, the contract awarding the grant states in bold print that the funds must be spent by June 30, 2023. That deadline has come and gone with none of the listed properties addressed.&emsp;&emsp;Bahn, in an e-mail to Braunlich, said that Bellevue was attempting to amend the grant because two of the three properties covered by the funding were no longer on the demolition list because one had been sold and the other was acquired through the county VPRP. &emsp;&emsp;Bahn said that the Ridge Avenue property was the one that was acquired through the VPRP. Documentation is confusing, however. The property owner listed by the borough in its July 2020 application is still being shown as the property owner by Allegheny County. In fact, county records indicate that the property was purchased by a development company in June of 1999 for $2,500, and then resold to the currently-listed owners identified by borough and county records for $15,500 in December of 2000.&emsp;&emsp;The property cited as being ineligible for demolition because it was sold is listed by the county records as having changed hands on May 4, 2023, less than two months before the grant was set to expire. &emsp;&emsp;Bahn, in her e-mail to Braunlich, said that Bellevue had proposed adding a property to the grant contract, withdrawing the Ridge and Kendall properties. She said that there was no documentation available to confirm that an amendment had been proposed because all of her discussions with DCED had occurred via telephone.&emsp;&emsp;The DCED, however, reports that an amendment was submitted for review by the DCED law department on June 28, 2023, two days before the grant was to expire.&emsp;&emsp;Braunlich has attended the last two council meetings, but received no response from officials to her questions about why the funds were not used as soon as they were received, at which time all three properties remained on the demolition list. Even if the borough had some inkling that the Ridge property would soon become ineligible, she said, no action was taken to amend the grant terms for nearly 25 months after it was awarded and available to be spent by the borough.&emsp;&emsp;.&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;