BUTLER TWP — A packed house of fretful residents Monday night gave the Butler Township Commissioners a two-and-a-half hour long earful about a proposed 50-unit, low-income townhouse complex.

The commissioners, in response, decided to take a month to think about it.

They voted unanimously to table the Thompson Greene development until their Jan. 19 meeting.

The Woda Group of Ohio wants to construct eight buildings encompassing 30 two-bedroom and 20 three-bedroom townhouses on the 11-acre Ritenour property near North Duffy Road’s intersection with Route 422.

Each two-story home would have a one-stall garage, and shared outdoor space would include a half-court basketball court, a bike path and a playground.

Woda, a private company, wants to build the development under a federal low-income tax credit program. Therefore, the housing units would be offered to people who make no more than 60 percent of the area’s median income and in exchange investor companies would receive federal tax credits.

Joseph McCabe, Woda vice president, said the average resident would make $19,000 to $30,000 a year and would pay about $675 per month for a two-bedroom townhouse or $800 per month for a three-bedroom townhouse.

He described the potential residents as “good taxpaying citizens” who are employed, for example, as a coffee shop barista or a military service person returning home from duty.

“It’s considered low-income housing, but you still must have some sort of income,” he said.

Woda would own and maintain the facility, screening rental applicants for criminal backgrounds and credit problems. The property, he said would be a $12 million investment for the company, and is not a “low end” development.

“We’re not building Section 8 housing,” McCabe said, but he concurred that people with Section 8 vouchers would not necessarily be turned away.

Residents who live on streets surrounding the proposed project, especially the adjacent Westwood Manor, did not seem convinced.

Specifically, they said, this type of development is sure to bring down the value of their properties and attract crime and drugs.

“Would you want a low- income housing development in your neighborhood?” asked Tom Rajchel, the first of 17 people to speak out against the plan.

Resident Tom Angert brought a petition signed by 336 neighbors opposed to low-income housing.

“They do not want this at all,” said Angert, who described low-income housing as “like a cancer” that would spread desolation into neighboring streets that currently are well- maintained.

“They don’t pay for nothing so they don’t care,” agreed resident Tim McClellan, a contractor who said he has visited similar developments elsewhere. “They trash places like these.”

Some of the neighbors also said they believed the development’s increased workload on the sewer system would aggravate the neighborhood’s existing flooding problems. Residents described the area as like a swamp or like Niagara Falls when it rains.

But Jim Tomazich, BASA engineer, said at the meeting that the development would not hurt the sewer system. He said it is likely the neighbors were having flooding issues because the Butler Area Sewer Authority in 2009 replaced the sewer lines in that area and now that they are water tight, they are no longer absorbing runoff water.

“They are no longer the French drains for the whole community,” he said noting that sewer lines are only intended to carry waste water from inside dwellings.

Township solicitor Larry Lutz warned the crowd that the commissioners, when they do vote on the proposal, are limited to considering a checklist of requirements outlined in township zoning ordinances. The property is zoned for multifamily uses.

Considerations such as the income of potential residents are not designated in those ordinances and cannot be legally considered, said both Lutz and the attorney representing the developer.

“So no matter what is said, as long as they meet the criteria or the ordinance it doesn’t matter?” asked resident David Dorsey, prompting some people to shout to the commissioners, “You don’t care.”

Taking issue with this, Lutz said, “We cannot change the ordinance retroactively because they brought in the plan and you don’t like it.”