Ford City residents frustrated with borough's mounting problems

When Al Garay heard Ford City officials were thinking about disbanding the small Allegheny River borough's police department, he decided enough was enough.

So he went to a town hall meeting to speak his mind.

While sitting amid the angry crowd in Ford City High School's auditorium, frustration took over, and the usually soft-spoken 62-year-old unstrapped his prosthetic leg and banged it against the edge of the stage, asking, “What am I supposed to protect myself with? This?”

Garay loves his town.

He grew up here, raised a family here and worked right down the street at the long-gone Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. plant.

And though he admits to employing an unorthodox method of making his point about police protection, Garay said it illustrates residents' increasing frustration with the Armstrong County community's mounting problems.

Small towns everywhere are finding it tough going these days, but Ford City — carved from swampy farmland in 1887 by PPG founder John B. Ford — is under siege.

When asked what it might take to turn things around, Mayor Marc Mantini said, “If we could get Mother Teresa here, maybe ... .”

In recent years:

• The FBI and the Department of Housing and Urban Development initiated a probe of how officials handled a $581,000 federal grant used to reclaim the site of Ford's sprawling PPG plant, land given to the borough after the facility closed in 1991. The grant mandated the cash-strapped borough retain the property until 2017, but officials defaulted on a $1 million mortgage taken out against the land, then lost it to foreclosure.

• In a last-ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy, the borough was given a $61,000 state grant last year for a consultant to sort out its financial woes. Otherwise, the community of 2,900 could be taken over by the state.

• When officials missed deadlines to submit plans to replace its ailing, nearly century-old water treatment plant, the state began levying $250-a-day fines that reached $63,000 before the issue was addressed. Council members say they'll replace the plant, but will have to borrow $3.1 million to do it.

• Last month, in what some residents viewed as the last straw, the borough could not salt icy streets during some of the worst winter weather because no one had ordered salt, leaving Garay to use an ax to chip away at 5 inches of ice on the road by his home.

“I don't know how people can make that many poor decisions in a row,” said state Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-Ford City. “This is the gang that couldn't shoot straight.”

Council Members Jerry Miklos, 62, and Josh Abernathy, 36, elected in 2013, say they are paying the price for past mismanagement.

“This is the first council that quit spending money,” said Abernathy, who with Miklos, were the only council members who agreed to speak with the Tribune-Review.

Downward spiral

Lifelong resident Andy Rudosky, 36, said it's sad to “sit here and watch the slow deterioration of my town. This was a nice place to live. Now there are needles in the alleys.”

In Rudosky's town, the hilltop homes John Ford built for PPG bosses remain, as do the smaller houses below for hourly workers who walked each day to their riverside plant.

A bronze statue of Ford, outfitted in a long coat, vest and bow tie, stands in Ford City Memorial Park, his somber face overlooking the site where his mill cranked out plate glass by the ton to meet demand in the early 1900s for panes in storefronts and skyscrapers.

Today's Ford City is by no means what John Ford envisioned.

Its downtown — a bowling alley on one end, a laundromat on the other and little in between — is foundering.

And borough officials grimace at lost opportunities to move the town back toward its heyday when PPG employed 3,500 and toilet maker Eljer Plumbingware had more than 800 workers before its exit in 2008.

Four years ago, council considered a plan to be paid $1 million plus 18 percent in royalties from each of five gas wells to be drilled near borough-owned property.

“It was a game-changer,” Mantini said.

But after meetings in which residents vehemently opposed the plan, the offer was withdrawn.

Council recently was presented a less lucrative offer from a Kittanning gas and oil firm to purchase the mineral rights under borough property for $150,000, a deal Pyle hoped would be accepted “for lack of anything better.”

No easy solutions

Miklos does not have a quick fix.

It will take “a great deal of effort and some luck” to pull the borough away from its trouble, he said.

When PPG closed and Eljer left, “Ford City was like an orphaned child. The future looked bleak.”

“We lost a lot,” Miklos said.

Lost was 15 percent of the borough's population since 2000, while those remaining have a median income of just $29,239, a little over half the national level of $53,891.

Some residents, many of whom posted signs throughout the borough reading, “Save Our Police, Dump Our Council,” said officials seem unwilling to listen.

They said that although residents wanted to keep the police force, council voted to cut its $514,000 budget nearly in half, leaving two full-time officers and about 40 hours per week to be split among part-timers.

That was it for Rachel Dinus, 37, who has stopped going to council meetings.

“It doesn't matter what you say as a citizen; they have their own agenda,” she said. “I've been here my whole life, and now I'm considering moving.”

Even Pyle said he's given the cold shoulder when offering to help.

“They say very little to me,” he said.

Lifelong resident Marlene Szymanski, 75, believes it's not as bad as some say and that leaders inherited a lot of problems.

“We need a lot of work done, but all little towns are like that,” she said. “It's not as bad as people let on.”

Chosen to lead the borough is 23-year-old recent college graduate Eden Ratliff, who worked for the borough as an intern for a few months before being hired as manager late last year.

“I believe that our community needs to continue to look for opportunities for growth,” said Ratliff, when asked about solutions to the borough's problems.

Priorities?

Some think officials' priorities are out of order. Instead of debates about fluoridating drinking water or searching for a larger meeting space, council should focus on revival.

One woman, impatient with the fluoridation discussion at a meeting, questioned the need for fluoride when she said many residents don't have their teeth, pointing to the borough's aging population.

Officials need to look ahead, not behind, said Frank Akpadock of Youngs-town State University's Center for Urban and Regional Studies.

If policymakers develop a plan that's “not based on yesterday, but for today and tomorrow,” a revival is possible, he said.

One former official, who lost his council seat in the 2013 election, thinks the solution is clear.

Former Council President Lou Vergari, 69, believes leaders should look to John Ford for answers.

When Ford laid out the town, “he put a park in the center of town, and people said, ‘Why are you dedicating such a valuable piece of property to a park?' And he said, ‘I'm doing it for the people.'

“It doesn't feel like council has concern for people,” Vergari said.

Craig Smith is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-380-5646 or csmith@tribweb.com.