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Amid fanfare from the Bethel Park High School marching band and applause from a throng of students enjoying a delay in the day's classes, workers placed the final steel beam Thursday for the borough's new high school.

The "topping-off" ceremony marked a milestone in the 2 1/2-year, $88 million project to replace Bethel Park's 51-year-old high school. Some residents, leery of a half-mill increase in property taxes that the school board approved for the 2009-10 budget, opposed the project because 0.3 of a mill of the money was directed to the school's construction.

"Not everybody was on the same page at first, but as the project goes forward, I think more people are getting on board," said high school principal Zeb Jansante.

About 400 people signed a petition last year urging the school board to delay the project and seek a vote by residents, but the board was not legally obligated to do so.

District spokeswoman Vicki Flotta noted the board held a public hearing in September 2008. "Support then was more overwhelmingly for (a new school) than against," she said.

Sporting a small evergreen tree in a nod to the Scandinavian origins of topping-off ceremonies, a broom symbolizing the project's "clean sweep" safety record, and flags for the United States and Bethel Park High School, workers bolted in place the beam bearing signatures of officials and students. It sits above what will become music classrooms and practice space next to the auditorium. The school will feature 94 classrooms, a 1,300-seat auditorium, a 2,350-seat gymnasium and an eight-lane swimming pool.

"This will be a state-of-the-art facility that will move education forward in Bethel Park," said school board President Donna Cook.

Before coming to Bethel Park, Jansante was principal at Mt. Lebanon High School from 2003-06, participating in early planning for that district's high school project. It, too, generated disagreement among taxpayers.

"They have their own issues there, but I think they'll start to see things move forward," Jansante said.

In Mt. Lebanon, the maximum project cost was set at $113.3 million, and school officials passed a 2.63-mill tax hike for 2010-11. The owner of a house assessed at $100,000 would pay an extra $263 under that rate.

Bethel Park awarded $73.3 million in construction contracts last August. Since December, records show the board has approved adding slightly more than $1 million to the project cost for such things as relocating pipes and equipment upgrades. Flotta said the extra money was part of the $88 million budget.

Work on the building, located on former athletic fields between the existing eight-building campus and Church Road, is expected to be completed in March 2012.

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