Munhall

Robin Rombach
The Post-Gazette

Mon Valley residents can experience the area’s historic past while looking out upon present-day developments from the new adult reading room at the Carnegie Library of Homestead.

The room, which has been restored to what library officials believe is its original design, sits in the front of the 110-year-old library and overlooks what was once the massive U.S. Steel Homestead Works, now the site of the sprawling retail and entertainment complex, The Waterfront.

That room design was taken from a black-and-white photo of the room that library officials believe dates to about 1920.

The project was completed and dedicated last month and was financed by grants from the Donald A. Abraham Memorial committee and former Homestead native William Campbell.

[ Full story available at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08346/934272-55.stm ]

Steel Valley school directors got some bad news Monday night when auditors told them the district is not operating with a balanced budget and that a tax increase for next year is a virtual certainty.

Betsy Krisher, a partner with the auditing firm of Maher Duessel, reviewed the firm’s draft audit report for the board’s finance committee and informed the board that it had overspent its general fund budget in 2007-08 by $349,266.

She warned that if a similar scenario exists this year, “you won’t have any fund balance left all.”

To cover the overspending in last year’s budget, the district used money from its fund balance, which now sits at $243,068.

“You have to balance in 2008-2009 or you will be in the red. There is no cushion,” Ms. Krisher told the handful of board members who showed up for the finance committee meeting along with Superintendent William Kinavey and Director of Operational Services Mark Cherpak.

[ Full story available at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08339/932497-55.stm ]

By Eric Heyl
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

If you hurry, you might be able to find some cleanser there, or perhaps a pack of chewing gum.

But the produce is gone, the deli case is empty and don’t even try to locate a quart of milk. Barren shelves provide the unmistakable evidence: Foodlane is going out of business.

After 60 years as a mainstay on Munhall’s Main Street, the small, independently owned grocery will close forever at the end of the day Saturday.

It certainly isn’t a moment that general manager Mark Andrews, who has worked at the store for 22 years, anticipates as anything less than difficult.

[ Full story available at: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/heyl/s_601225.html ]

By Elizabeth Spiker

I have been telling this story to a few people for years now. I’d like to share it with everyone because, quite simply, it will make you believe in people. We could all use a story like that.

A few years ago, I was teaching English at Steel Valley High School. For those who don’t know, it’s a small school district serving Munhall, Homestead and West Homestead. Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch is one of Steel Valley’s most famous alums. The kids all walk. There are no buses from the school district. The kids are a mixed bag of black, white and Asian and come from varying economic backgrounds. While no one I ever taught came from a “wealthy” family, I did teach many poor students for whom school was often a safe haven from their home lives.

When I would tell people my livelihood, they would often say, “My, I couldn’t ever teach school! Kids today are just awful.” Or, “Surrounded by teenagers all day? No thanks!”

[ Full story available at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08336/931924-294.stm ]

By Mary Ann Thomas
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW

When West Homestead Mayor John Dindak surveys the Waterfront complex, teeming with shops, movie theaters and waterslides, he remembers that this is where he lived, where he worked and where he lost almost everything.

Many of the landmarks of Dindak’s life mirror the town where he has been mayor for 37 years.

As visitors continue to flock to the Waterfront, which sprawls over hundreds of acres in parts of West Homestead, Homestead and Munhall, other intrepid souls are sampling the towns’ ethnic and industrial roots.

The Bulgarian Macedonian National Educational and Cultural Center on West Eighth Street in West Homestead and the Carnegie Library Music Hall of Homestead in nearby Munhall have survived amid shuttered mills and lost jobs.

[ Full story available at: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/focus/s_597859.html ]