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WILKES-BARRE — A local attorney said Wednesday that he plans to appeal the city Zoning Hearing Board’s approval of a proposed addition to Kistler Elementary for approximately 300 more students.
Kimberly Borland said Wednesday he will be filing the challenge in the near future individually as a city resident and property owner.
Borland spoke out at the board’s Aug. 17 public meeting when Wilkes-Barre Area School District solicitor Ray Wendolowski requested variances to construct a $15 million, three-story addition with 24 classrooms and a gym for seventh and eighth grade students moving from nearby Meyers high school.
“The basis for the appeal will be the arguments we made at the hearing,” Borland said.
The addition to Kistler fits into the district’s overall plan to consolidate two of three high schools and build a new school downtown. Borland, an opponent of the consolidation, has raised concerns that the district has not looked into the effects of closing Meyers after the grade school students are moved and the new school is built.
“I also want an impact study done,” Borland said.
The Kistler expansion is directly connected to the closing of Meyers, Borland has said. One does not happen without the other, he told the board at last week’s meeting. Borland said the district has not done its homework on what the closing means to not only South Wilkes-Barre but also the entire city.
“The board needs to understand that a vote to favor the district here is a vote to abandon a building in that neighborhood. That’s what the impact is supposed to be about, the abandonment of that building and that and only that,” Borland said at the hearing.
When board member Carl Naessig looked for support for his motion to put the question of a study to vote, fellow board members Edward DiMichele and Vaugh Koter were silent.
Borland argued that the district lacks the necessary city and federal approvals to use the 98-space parking lot at Miner Park located adjacent to Kistler on Old River Road. The district asked the board for permission to reduce the 304 parking spaces required by zoning to 199, and factored the city-0wned Miner Park lot into the total number.
“I think that it’s an error in the law to grant this application without having the parking agreement in place with the city, and the board didn’t even make it conditional on that,” Borland said in reaction to the board’s decision. “Now they don’t have to go out and get it unless we appeal.”