In this appeal from Allegheny County, the Commonwealth Court found no error in a decision made by the City of Pittsburgh’s Historic Review Commission, which issued a certificate of appropriateness for a proposal to construct a new home in a historic district called “Lemmon Row.”
Continue readingTag: Due Process
In this appeal from a determination of the Office of Open Records (OOR), the Commonwealth Court found that information voluntarily submitted to a Commonwealth agency and which was not needed by the agency to perform its duties, did not constitute a “record” under the RTKL. As such, the requested information did not have to be disclosed.
In the first of two cases relating to the subject property, the Commonwealth Court affirmed the decision of the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County affirming the London Grove Township Zoning Hearing Board’s (“ZHB”) denial of a variance to Delchester Developers (“Delchester”) to develop two adjoining properties. The Court concluded that the ZHB had properly interpreted its zoning ordinance, that Delchester’s validity challenge of the Borough’s stormwater ordinance was not within the ZHB’s jurisdiction, and the Township’s “net out” provision was neither a violation of due process nor an illegal taking.
A landlord learned an expensive lesson this week about the Municipal Claims and Tax Liens Act (“MCTLA”), when the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania found liens placed on the property by the City of Philadelphia were his responsibility. Property owner, Raymond Perfetti, discovered liens had been placed on his properties after tenants who were responsible for their own gas bills vacated the property without paying the respective gas bills. Perfetti argued that his due process was violated by the City’s filing of liens against his property for the unpaid bills and claimed to have no notice of his tenants’ delinquencies, or of the four liens placed on the property, only discovering them three years later.
