Robinson commissioner Ron Shiwarski has made a call for reform in government and named several issues he feels have been dragging on too long.

Those issues were, in his words: "Coventry Park, Lake Steuben, retention pond after retention pond, the pavement management system, homeowners' associations, the Chop House, Butya's field and who owns it, the commercial parking tax, the Frank Murgia saga, building permits, inspectors, code enforcement, past indiscretions, blunders and who's blaming what on who and who for what."

Here are summaries of those issues and where they stand:

• Coventry Park -- Developer Steven Victor in 2004 proposed building 66 houses on 42 acres on Clever Road, after remediating an abandoned coal mine on the property.

He applied for a variance so he could relocate a small stream on the property, was denied by the Zoning Hearing Board early in 2005 and began pursuing appeals to that decision.

Then, in 2006, Mr. Victor went ahead with the work on the basis of state and federal mining permits. The township ordered him to cease work that fall, and Mr. Victor appealed again.

There are now a total of eight court cases on file between the township and Mr. Victor.

Earlier this month, Commonwealth Court made two rulings. One allows Mr. Victor to start removing the remaining coal on the site. The other orders him to put the stream back in its original state when he's done with the site. His housing plan -- which was originally Coventry Park and is now renamed Stafford Park -- may be limited to about 50 houses if that ruling stands.

At last report, Mr. Victor and his attorney were pondering whether to further appeal the Commonwealth Court decision. The mining, meanwhile, could begin any day.

• Lake Steuben -- This man-made lake on Aiken Road was a popular, privately owned swimming area in the 1930s and '40s, but filled in with silt over time.

The lake itself is township property -- the result of a legal dispute in the 1970s -- but is surrounded by private homes.

The problem now is that the state Department of Environmental Protection has declared the dam that creates the lake to be deficient. The township needs to replace the dam's spillway, put a new culvert under Aiken Road or breach the dam and drain the lake.

The third option is the cheapest, simplest and most permanent, but the neighbors don't want the lake to disappear.

At last report, the township's engineering firm, Remington, Vernick and Beach, was looking for grant money to help with the dam. One possibility is turning it into park land, which would qualify it for grants but would entail opening it to the public.

Retention pond after retention pond: The major ongoing retention pond dispute is the one involving Meadowview Highlands.

Last spring, the stackpipe failed on a pond serving the housing development, causing storm water to flow onto the Diebold Road property of Audrey Zello. Mrs. Zello's son-in-law, Jim Thomas, has claimed that a Meadowview resident then removed a fence around the pond and filled it in, making the matter worse.

This issue appears to be nearly resolved. The developer of the housing plan went bankrupt, but Pepper Hamilton, a national law firm handling the developer's assets, has, after much negotiation, agreed to take responsibility for the pond. A contractor has been hired, and work will begin soon.

Pepper Hamilton also agreed to a contract with the township to provide ongoing maintenance on the pond.

• Pavement management system -- This was proposed by the township's engineers, Remington, Vernick and Beach, and involves creating a systematic, long-term approach to roads throughout the township. By identifying upcoming needs it purports to make budgeting easier, and by doing maintenance on a regular cycle it purports to extend the life of the pavement and save money.

Mr. Shiwarski was a proponent of the idea when it was proposed in March, but other commissioners balked at the up-front, $23,500 estimated cost of a startup study of existing conditions. Some commissioners also wondered if the program substantially was different from what had been done in the past.

Ultimately the commissioners opted to put the issue off for a year.

• Homeowners' associations -- One contributor to the problems with the Meadowview Highlands retention pond is that the homeowners' association which was supposed to take care of it was never formed. That left no one responsible for taking care of the pond.

A similar situation exists in the Oak Ridge Estates housing plan. Residents there complained to the township last year that developer Michael Homer had not done a final coat of asphalt on the streets and had not installed streetlights. Mr. Homer replied that the homeowner's association was supposed to pay the electric bills for the lights, and no association had been formed.

This issue appears to be close to a solution. Robinson planning officer Rick Urbano on Monday said Mr. Homer has two paving bids and is awaiting a third, and said he was told that the paperwork has been filed to form the homeowner' s association.

What the township's role should be in making sure that such associations actually do get formed to do the work they are supposed to, however, has not been addressed.

• Pittsburgh Chop House -- This restaurant, the former Red Bull Inn on Campbells Run Road, changed names but not ownership.

In June, Commissioner Jerry Brouker went public with allegations that the restaurant went through a $1.3 million renovation, with significant structural and mechanical work, without being required to get a building permit. The story was supported by contractors who worked on the renovation, and by George Hondula, who was at the time the township's building inspector.

Building permits are significant because they give inspectors access to make sure work is done properly and because they kick off the reassessment process -- buildings that are worth more end up paying more in property taxes. They are required any time any structural or mechanical work is done on a building.

The commissioners have met privately on the issue at least twice, and talked to the contractors in private. No action has yet been taken.

Dan Fleck, one of the three sibling owners of the Chop House, confronted Mr. Brouker at Monday's commissioners' meeting, claiming that his allegations were untrue and unfair, and have hurt the restaurant's business.

"We did nothing wrong," Mr. Fleck said. "We did everything we were asked to do, got every permit we were told to get."

• Butya's field -- This is a baseball field on land owned by local lawyer and restaurant owner John Butya.

The township has maintained the field and has collected fees from groups that use it. Mr. Butya this year requested that the township upgrade the infield and repair a fence, work with a price tag of about $10,000.

The commissioners balked, because the township does not own the field and because the fees come nowhere near covering the cost.

The issue is essentially in limbo.

There is an interesting subtext, however. The commissioners this year replaced Mr. Butya as solicitor for the planning commission. Mr. Brouker, one of two Republicans on the five-member board and a consistent minority voice, has repeatedly described that move as political, punishment because Mr. Butya did not support the eventual winning ticket in last year's commissioners election.

The board Democrats have not responded directly, but have repeatedly described Mr. Brouker's various statements as themselves politically motivated.

• Commercial parking tax -- This is an idea Mr. Shiwarski pushed immediately after being seated on the board at the beginning of the year. It involves putting a tax on commercial parking spaces as a way to tap into the township's burgeoning commercial sector for revenue.

The commissioners in April directed solicitor Sam Kamin and manager Rich Charnovich to develop an ordinance putting such a tax in place.

The proposed tax raises legal questions, however. Essentially, the land where the parking spaces lie is already taxed once, through regular property taxes; taxing it again my be problematic. A number of business owners have also raised fairness issues.

The original plan was to have a public hearing on a proposed ordinance in June, but Mr. Kamin in April asked for an indefinite delay. The public hearing has not been rescheduled.

• Frank Murgia saga -- Mr. Murgia, treasurer and tax collector for 25 years, was criticized by Mr. Brouker and Ed Ritter long before 2005, when Mr. Ritter beat Mr. Murgia at the polls and Mr. Brouker won a commissioner's seat.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Ritter reported finding a snarl of records and hundreds of thousands in uncollected taxes. In the fall of 2006, after several requests from Mr. Ritter, the commissioners ordered an audit to try to clear up the mess.

The next issue was missing records; Mr. Murgia had taken a number of boxes of records home with him, and the township spent much of 2007 trying to get him to return them, hampered by the fact that Mr. Murgia was in poor health.

Then Mr. Kamin and Mr. Charnovich became aware, sometime in the summer of 2007, that there was $191,000 of tax money in two accounts controlled by Mr. Murgia and previously unknown to the township. That became public knowledge in December.

The township got control of the accounts, but records are scanty on where the money came from.

In February Edward Gardner of Case Sabatini gave the results of the audit ordered in 2006. In a 10-minute public report -- he already had spoken to the commissioners in private -- he said he had reviewed the years 2002-05 and had found about $12,000 in penalties that should have been paid but weren't.

Questioned on the $191,000, Mr. Gardner said the money had been accounted for and disbursed, $150,000 to Montour School District and $41,000 to the township, and suggested that the township "close the books on the former tax collector."

Mr. Ritter has since then repeatedly questioned how the money could have been disbursed without records saying where it came from. He has been pushing for the last month to get copies of the deposit checks from the bank involved.

Monday night, Mr. Ritter said he would check on the cost of getting the bank records. Meanwhile, Mr. Charnovich said the $191,000 had in fact not all been disbursed. He said $30,000 had gone to the township and $85,000 to the school district, but that the remainder -- $76,000 -- was being held until the records are complete.

• Building permits, inspectors, code enforcement -- These all seem to be references to the Pittsburgh Chop House issue, though questions have also been raised this year about the fairness of the township's attempts to enforce its ordinance limiting temporary signs.

The township last fall began an effort to enforce its ordinance limiting temporary signs, only to find its personnel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of both the abuse of sign rules and of the business community itself -- there are an estimated 1,500 businesses in Robinson.

The commissioners this spring passed revisions to the sign ordinance, and the issue has not come up again.

Past indiscretions, blunders and who's blaming what on who and who for what: This category is subjective enough, and has enough candidates for inclusion, that it would be unfair to elaborate.