When young families shop for a place to buy a home, one of the first things they look for is the quality of its school district.  Cranberry is fortunate to be in the Seneca Valley School District – a district which is continuing to rise among the ranks of the best in Pennsylvania.  As a result, Cranberry Township is nationally recognized as a great place to raise a family.  And the Township’s Board and staff are committed to doing whatever they can to maintain the District’s upward momentum.

But it’s indirect.  For reasons which are somewhat obscure, Pennsylvania has historically fragmented its public services, erecting barriers between the local governments and their school districts.  Each goes about its own business, pretty much without regard to what the other is doing.  This is despite the fact that neither can succeed without the other.  It’s a situation which can easily lead to foolish and wasteful behavior, harming the interests of the constituents that both of them share.

Even though we realize that Cranberry Township and Seneca Valley are separately governed, separately financed, and have different geographic footprints, we also realize that three-quarters of the district’s students are Cranberry residents.  So to help sustain the District’s continuing quest for excellence, we have formed a collaborative relationship between the two entities.  And we think both of us benefit from that arrangement.

A few examples:

• We collaborate in our maintenance functions, sharing expertise, personnel and equipment as needed.
• We cooperate on environmental education with the District’s three schools in the Township.  For instance, we supply equipment and financial support for the schools’ recycling efforts, help students take field trips to see how industry manages recycling, and jointly sponsor a Rain Barrel program for our residents.
• Technicians from the Township’s wastewater treatment plant partner with secondary school teachers in exploring real world applications of biology, and donate gently used laboratory equipment to promote science in the schools.
• Cranberry’s engineering professionals help to support the District’s exceptional STEM program efforts.
• Our communication staff collaborates with the School District’s Communication Office to make sure residents learn about the activities of both organizations.
• The Township has spearheaded efforts to obtain federal funds to improve District building security, along with new software to assure safe access to those buildings.
• Our Public Safety Professionals collaborate with School District Administrators to pre-plan responses to any incidents on District property. 
• We support the efforts of high school seniors who are required to complete senior projects.  During the 2012-13 school year alone, the Township supported 66 seniors who needed to use Township facilities or equipment.  In addition, Township staff served as mentors on other Senior Projects.
• We are in constant contact with the District’s Transportation Office to assure safe and efficient school bus service for our residents, especially when it comes to construction and traffic signal projects that could affect school bus routes.
• Our Parks and Recreation Department coordinates with the School District’s Athletic offices on the use of Township and School District owned athletic facilities.

This is just a sample of what’s going on between our local government and our School District.  In the future, we look forward to taking this effort to even higher levels.  So while we accept that the Township and the District are, in fact, separate entities, we also realize that for both of us, it’s all about providing taxpayers with the best possible service at the most reasonable cost.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this collaboration.  Write me at: jerry.andree@cranberrytownship.org

Cranberry Township’s reputation for success is widely known, at least within Pennsylvania.  So it’s no surprise that we are frequently contacted by other local governments who want to discover the secrets behind our vitality so they can replicate them back home.  And we’re always happy to oblige them.  But most of the time, they fail to grasp what’s really behind it. 

Take for example our fire company – one of the finest in the state.  I recently had the pleasure of meeting a group of first responders from another Butler County community as they were training, along with our own firefighters, in Cranberry’s new Public Safety Training classroom.  They confided in me how frustrated they were over their declining number of volunteers and the unending conflict between their organization and its local government. 

So I told them about Cranberry’s culture, which recognizes that while differing personalities and opinions are a reality – they can also result in better decisions.  However, once a decision is made, we place an even higher value on their ongoing collaboration.  And we regard conflict between the organizations that serve our residents as intolerable. 

Thirty years ago, Cranberry’s fire company faced exactly that sort of difficult decision.  In essence, it was a choice between having the fire company continue as an independent, self-supporting organization, or making the Township financially responsible for the fire company’s capital and operating expenses.  Feelings were strong on both sides, but in the end, we formed a partnership which has provided Cranberry’s residents and businesses with professional-grade fire and rescue services, while saving millions of taxpayer dollars by maintaining an all-volunteer organization.

As a result, despite both statewide and nationwide declines, the number of volunteers in our Fire Company is growing substantially.  And all of them receive consistently high levels of training and expert guidance. 

Something similar happened recently when another local government visited our parks.  They wanted to figure out how they could achieve quality recreational areas for their own residents.  And they assumed it was a technical reason – the type of grass seed we use, our watering system, or the size of our programming staff, for instance.  Of course, those are all important.  But the real reason is the long-term partnerships Cranberry’s government has formed with our local sports associations.  Hundreds of volunteers from those associations provide a quality of youth sports programming that is unmatched in western Pennsylvania.

And right now, a similar partnership is occurring with the construction of Cranberry’s new Kids Castle playground in Community Park.  Thousands of residents and businesses are coming together under the stewardship of the Cranberry Township Community Chest and the Cranberry CUP organization to create a great playground for another generation of local residents.

Of course, none of this easy.  Our community’s commitment to sustainable partnerships requires a lot of hard work, and personality differences will always exist.  But we also know that long-term relationships are built on a foundation of sincere respect for one another.  So while I am always pleased to share Cranberry’s organizational savvy and technical know-how with leaders from other communities, the most powerful elements of our success are actually a lot more straightforward. 

Cooperation, partnership and respect are fundamental human qualities.  And they can be difficult to sustain.  But learning to apply those concepts to local government has been the key to Cranberry’s success.  And that is the message I’d like to share with our visitors. 
I’d love to hear your thoughts, too.  Contact me at jerry.andree@cranberrytownship.org

There are hundreds of municipalities in the Greater Pittsburgh area.  Each of them is responsible for a variety of tasks related to safeguarding their residents’ health, safety, and welfare.  But relatively few do them really well, according to the Allegheny League of Municipalities.  That’s something the organization would like to see change.

So this spring, a handful of outstanding municipalities – mostly in Allegheny County – were publicly recognized for good government practices.  Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald made the League’s presentations.  But even though we’re part of Butler County, Cranberry Township, as an Associate Member, was honored as one of the program’s first Banner Communities.  Why?

For years, friends and colleagues from other local governments have asked me the same thing: why is Cranberry so successful?  Some of them turn cynical about it, saying it’s because our taxes are so low – as though low taxes were some sort of unsavory scheme.  Or that it’s just because of our location and great highway access.  Of course, good roads are important assets. 

But there are lots of other communities in the region situated near major highways which haven’t come even close to achieving their potential.  And in just about every case, it’s because their officials have succumbed to the same electile dysfunction which has turned the nation’s Congress into a squabbling, impotent entity – one that ignores real issues and instead, continues kicking the can down the road for others to deal with. 

Here in Cranberry, the members of our elected Board of Supervisors also have strong opinions.  But in our case, they manage to park their differences at the door when they gather to set course for Cranberry Township.  That’s when their focus turns to what’s best for Cranberry’s residents.  Politics and ideology don’t drive those decisions.  Instead, our Board has a clear understanding of its own policy-making role, as well as the implementation role played by the Township’s professional staff.  They fly at 30,000 feet, giving clear direction about where to head, leaving the staff to get it done and then holding me accountable for the result, which is a responsibility I welcome.

The League’s recognition program was created last year to show that it’s really possible to have good government at the local level.  That’s a good thing because local governments have more impact on residents’ daily lives than any other level of government.  The Banner Community program honors municipalities who do a particularly good job of advocacy, cooperation, education, and communication.  And we’re very pleased to have been chosen for this honor. 

We’re also proud to note that the mover behind the formation of that recognition program is one of our own.  Dick Hadley, who is the Executive Director of the Allegheny League of Municipalities, is himself a Cranberry resident, a long-serving member of Cranberry’s Board of Supervisors, and a very strong supporter of non-partisan, good government. 

We’re flattered to be in such good company.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about local government.  Write me at: jerry.andree@cranberrytownship.org