Schuylkill County may begin looking for a new home for its Coroner’s Office.
Commissioners Chairman Larry Padora said Wednesday, “I’m going to start looking into moving the Coroner’s Office, no matter what.”
That statement followed a decision by the County’s Zoning Hearing Board the night prior to deny a variance request from a prospective buyer of the former school building in New Philadelphia where the Coroner’s Office and Morgue is currently located. The prospective buyer wanted to open a haunted house inside the former school.
Padora publicly expressed concerns that since it appears that sale may fall through because of the zoning denial, the fate of the school building is up in the air.
Schuylkill County pays the owner of the building, the current Coroner, David Moylan, $2,500 a month in rent to house that office in a portion of the former school.
Padora said Wednesday that he was “waiting to see what happened” at Tuesday’s Zoning Hearing Board meeting before taking a next step.
“I was just waiting to see what happened because if somebody was buying it and going to fix it up,” Padora added.
“Deplorable”
At that zoning hearing on Tuesday, it was also revealed that not only is the school building in poor condition, Moylan soon may not even be allowed to rent space in it.
New Philadelphia Mayor Terri Gibbons described the building’s condition as “deplorable.”
Gibbons said when a community organization met with Moylan to potentially host movie nights at the building’s auditorium, she got a first-hand look at the conditions.
“There were buckets of water. The ceiling’s falling down,” Gibbons said.
When she walked in the front entrance of the school building – which also serves as the office to his Simon Kramer Institute – Gibbons said she had to “weave around” more buckets of leaking water.
The Coroner’s Office itself is not located in the main portion of the school building.
It has a separate, rear entrance and it’s been newly renovated.
Padora said the Coroner’s Office is even sealed off from the rest of the building. But the County’s hand may be forced if Moylan isn’t even permitted to rent space at his property.
Gibbons says the borough’s third-party code enforcement firm, Arro Consulting, recently sent Moylan a “soft letter” to notify him that he was required to register the building as a rental property and that in order to rent space in it, it must be inspected.
To date, the borough hasn’t gotten a response to the letter and no inspection has been scheduled, according to Gibbons. There are currently no code violations for which Moylan has been cited.
A New Home for the Schuylkill County Coroner’s Office
Schuylkill County does not have a dedicated Coroner’s Office. For years now, it’s been wherever the elected Coroner has chosen. The County ends up renting space from whoever wins the election.
Prior to Moylan, the County had a similar arrangement with the late David Dutcavich.
But that’s not a situation Padora prefers.
“My ideal place is, I want it in a county building. I never understood why it moved around,” he said.
One potential location Padora plans to explore for a permanent home of the Coroner’s Office is the former STS headquarters at the Saint Clair Industrial Park.
When the new STS headquarters opened, Padora said there was a push inside the Courthouse to sell the property.
“Everybody wanted me to sell STS right away,” he said. “If we move it to a County building, now we’re not paying rent and that’s why I really didn’t want to get rid of STS. I think that STS building is a viable solution.”
If the County were to move its Coroner’s Office abruptly, it’s covered legally. Padora said there’s a 60-day out in its lease with Moylan.
Should the County’s timeline on moving be hastened by whatever happens with Moylan’s building in New Philadelphia, Gibbons tells The Canary that the borough would allow the County time to get its property from the building and into a new location.
Padora believes the Coroner’s Office could be relocated to the former STS building and be functional almost immediately.
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