Antis Township has filed a motion asking Blair County Judge Lou Schmitt to dissolve the temporary injunction Schmitt recently granted that stops the township from decertifying the Pinecroft Volunteer Fire Company in response to the company’s refusal to be folded into Excelsior Fire Department No. 1 of Bellwood.

The arguments that Pinecroft used to support its injunction request are based entirely on policy preferences within the discretion of the township supervisors, and do not include allegations of legal missteps, township solicitor Patrick Fanelli stated Wednesday in both a motion to dissolve the injunction and in separate preliminary objections.

Pinecroft attorney Joe Addink claims that the township supervisors should have spent more time on the issue of whether Pinecroft must be absorbed by Excelsior; that the supervisors should take into consideration subsidiary recommendations in a pair of fire studies that call for unification of the township fire service; that the supervisors ought to allow for a single company to still preserve Pinecroft’s identity; and that the supervisors should consider the potential loss of disaffected Pinecroft firefighters if a merger is forced on the company, Fanelli states.

Those requests by Pinecroft are for the supervisors to take alternative political stands that Pinecroft would prefer, but make no legal case against the stands that the supervisors have actually taken, according to Fanelli.

“(They’re) policy arguments, not legal ones,” Fanelli states. “(T)he crux of plaintiff’s (Pinecroft’s) complaint is that the action by the duly elected township supervisors was illegal or improper in any way, but rather that the plaintiff simply does not like it or agree with it.”

It’s tantamount to a resident filing an action against the township because the supervisors picked certain roads rather than others for its annual paving project, or because the supervisors picked operating hours for public parks that the resident didn’t like, according to Fanelli.

The Second Class Township Code gives elected supervisors “discretionary power regarding the manner in which fire protection is provided,” Fanelli states.

“(The) plaintiff should not be asking a court to substitute its judgment for the elected supervisors’ (judgment),” he states.

A March 5 deadline that was set in January by the supervisors for Pinecroft to agree to the merger was arbitrary and didn’t give the parties sufficient time to work out the issues, according to Addink’s petition for the injunction.

Additionally, there’s no reason for haste, Addink states in the document.

The parties may yet be able to figure out a way to unify the departments while also permitting Pinecroft to retain its identity, Addink states.

Schmitt has set a hearing on the preliminary injunction for March 26.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.