Jim Thorpe district parking discussed

Jim Thorpe Area School District is seeking an amendment to an agreement it made with the borough involving a land development plan and zoning permit in the late 1990s, when the high school was expanded.

The matter came to light after the borough raised the issue of the district being 36 parking spots short of the required 500 at its high school complex. According to Councilman Mike Yeastedt, there is also a question over whether 57 parking spaces along the baseball field are indeed in existence and shown on property plans.

Jim Thorpe Area High School Principal Thomas Lesisko addressed the issue last week at a borough workshop and asked for the amendment to reflect the current number of parking spaces provided at the high school.

“The agreement uses a maximum attendance of 1,500 people and calls for one parking spot for every three people,” Lesisko said. “The reality is that we have only seven events a year, five home varsity football games and two graduation ceremonies (one for Jim Thorpe and one for Carbon Career and Technical Institute), where we have parking overflowing into the community. It’s probably 20 hours out of the entire year. To say we are 36 spots short after 20 years seems really excessive.”

While Yeastedt said he understood Lesisko’s point, the borough’s stance is that the zoning ordinance requires everyone to have the required number of parking spots.

“That requirement is set up for a reason,” Yeastedt said. “It is so that there are sufficient spots available when you are at capacity. We also don’t think we have those parking spaces by the baseball field. We need to get these answers back at the committee level before we put anything before council.”

During the school day, Lesisko said, the parking lot is only utilized at about 40 percent. During the five home football games and graduation ceremonies, buses normally parked on the property are moved to open up all available spaces.

“There are even times for football games where if it is raining and the game is on television, we might only get 1,000 people,” Lesisko said. “That is the reality of it.”

A member of council when the number of parking spots was decided, Mayor Michael Sofranko recalled that it wasn’t an easy task at the time.

“Parking was a big issue,” he said. “We were at almost 1,500 spots at first and it was a constant sit-down with myself, Ron Sheehan, and solicitor Nanovic to try to figure out how to get parking that could handle the overflows. At that time, nobody knew how many people would be at a football game.”

Sofranko told council that the biggest current complaints from residents near the high school that come across his desk are not related to overflow parking during football games or graduations.

“I hear more about students who go to the Lehigh Carbon Community College campus that park on Center Street than anything else,” he said. “I’m not trying to sound political, but that’s a fact.”

Jim Thorpe Planning Commission Chairman Louis Hall said any exceptions to the zoning ordinance should apply for everyone.

“I think at that point we should change the zoning ordinance,” Hall said. “We can’t keep making these exceptions for different people every time a situation comes up. It creates problems, If you change it for one, change it for all.”