Charleroi seeks replacement after engineering firm resigns

Council will reach out to RVE, which served the borough before being replaced in February.

Charleroi Borough’s engineering firm, K2, abruptly resigned Wednesday after less than five months on the job.

In February, in a nearly split vote, council decided to hire K2 to replace Remington & Vernik.

New council members who took office in January — President Kristin Hopkins-Calcek, Robert Whiten Jr. and Thomas Santoro— as well as incumbent and current Vice President Jerry Jericho have at times questioned the cost of RVE’s services, which led council to explore other options for the service.

K2, Penn E&R and RVE all fielded questions from council members Joe Smith and Marry Celaschi, who conducted interviews for the position.

Smith suggested months ago to keep RVE, even though it isn’t the cheapest option, but K2 was the second firm recommended for the job. Smith and Celaschi both had problems with that recommendation based on answers provided to them during the interview process and information provided to them about K2’s performance in other municipalities.

Still, K2 was selected in a 4-3 vote with Hopkins-Calcek, Jericho, Whiten and Santoro voting yes and Celaschi, Paul Pivovarnik and Smith opposing the move.

In the months since, Celaschi has continued to bring up problems he has with the company’s performance, specifically its lack of attendance at council meetings.

Since being hired in February, K2 representatives have missed more meetings than they have attended.

The firm was selected to attend one meeting per month, but has not been able to make that commitment for various reasons.

Communication with borough council members also has been a problem, with several time-sensitive projects in the works, including a paving project, stormwater project with Davies Ford and extensive park rehabilitation projects.

Last week, Jericho said he had not heard anything from K2 concerning the park project.

“We can’t work this way,” Jericho said last week, adding that he planned to reach out to the firm to discuss ongoing projects.

“There are projects that have been sitting on the table for a while,” Celaschi said at July’s agenda meeting. “There were many concerns (about K2) because of several townships that had parted ways with them and the main reason was because they were understaffed and unable to perform their duties. …Our previous engineers never missed a meeting. If they can’t even send an associate engineer to the borough to attend our meetings, it validates our concerns.”

This week, council added an item on the agenda to explore engineering options, but before further discussion could be had on the matter, council learned K2 had sent a letter to resign from the position.

In the letter dated July 10, the company said due to its current workload it is unable to meet the borough’s expectations for deadlines on projects.

“Upon proposing engineering services to the borough, it was not brought to our attention the quantity of projects that would be assigned in a short time,” the letter states. “Based on the quick turnaround time expected of the borough, we feel that we cannot provide a quality product to meet your expectations without sacrificing existing clients and projects.”

Hopkins-Calcek said while she expected to further discuss engineering services for the borough Wednesday, the letter of resignation came as a surprise.

Council unanimously decided to reach out to its former engineering firm, RVE, to see if it would like to come back to provide its services, contingent upon its rates.

“We did want to explore other options, but we need to get things rolling,” Hopkins- Calcek said. “Pricing is a concern, but we are in a tough spot. We don’t have time to spend another month or two interviewing firms all over again.

“Time is of the essence to get these projects done this year. Our former firm is familiar with these projects, and if they are willing to take the job, it makes sense. We don’t have a lot of other options right now.”

Hopkins-Calcek said while some members of council had a problem with RVE’s rates, the firm’s performance was never brought into question.

“They did a good job, we know that,” she said. “Cost was the biggest issue, but there were extenuating circumstances, with the MS4 and other DEP related things, we did pay more money to handle those issues that we will not have to worry about now. So we will see what happens.”

If RVE decided to not come back to provide engineering services to the borough, council will have to find another option quickly to get time-sensitive projects done as soon as possible.