TRPIL advocates heard at city council meeting
Members and clients of Transitional Paths to Independent Living attended the Washington City Council meeting Thursday night to voice concerns about a recent stop-work order against renovations on the nonprofit’s new facility.
Early last week, the city’s building inspectors, The Harshman Civil Engineering Group, put a stop-work order on the building, the former YWCA, because of black mold.
“TRPIL was already involved in remediation work,” said Michael Mehlmauer, chairman of TRPIL’s board of directors. “That’s why we felt we were treated unfairly. It was like they didn’t respect us at all.”
The report of the mold came from Accredited Environmental Technologies Inc. of Pittsburgh, which TRPIL has used in the past to develop mold-remediation plans. AET’s report, dated June 12, states 50,000 square feet of plaster-covered walls were affected by the growth of black mold. It also states groundwater has “infiltrated” the sub-basement, which has concrete walls that are not waterproof.
When The Harshman Group received the report last week, they issued the stop-work order, because they needed to get a remediation plan from TRPIL before any work could continue, according to the company’s owner, Jamie Harshman, and Councilman Joe Manning.
Manning said that between the June 12 report and when the stop-work order was issued, contractors had been working on the project and doing mold-remediation work without respirators. He also said new drywall and other building materials had been leaning against portions of the building’s walls that have mold.
Manning told the TRPIL representatives and advocates that the city has no intention of holding up the project, but that safety was the main concern.
“Our building code officials treat everyone fairly,” he said. “There was nothing malicious about it. We had to do what was necessary to make the building safe.”
Council and representatives of TRPIL, which advocates for people with disabilities, agreed that communication could have been better throughout the process.
“We hit a pothole with our communication,” said Nan Sninsky, TRPIL’s chief administrative officer.
Manning said now that the city has a remediation plan for the mold and safety precautions are being met, the work can be done on the remediation. Once that’s completed, the rest of the construction project can continue.