Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Tax hike, costs for police force questioned
‘Gigantic’ increase, expenditures come under fire
KENNETT TOWNSHIP » For the second time in a matter of weeks, a number of residents have shown up at a Kennett Township public meeting to complain about a recent tax hike.
The township’s board of supervisors holds two meetings a month, and at the April 4 meeting a number of residents and two former Republican supervisors came to question the vote in December to add a 1.9-mill emergency services tax hike to the existing 0.4-mill real estate taxes.
Many of the group came again to the supervisors’ meeting Wednesday night to question and in some cases passionately denounce the spending trends that led to the tax hike.
Township resident Phyllis Recca came to the meeting with a handout detailing the township’s expenditures year to year. She said the expenses had started rising when Scudder Stevens was elected to the board of supervisors and continued to rise as he became chair in 2014.
Recca called the recent tax increase “gigantic,” and said she believed the supervisors had established a dedicated emergency services tax in order to discourage people from questioning it. Public safety was being made a “pawn,” she said, in order to keep the public from questioning what she called “bloated” expenditures
in other areas.
At the meeting two weeks ago, the complaining residents largely avoided directly questioning the need for a police force at its current size of eight full-time and two part-time officers. But Wednesday night Recca asked what had changed in recent years to justify the increased size of the force.
Supervisor Richard Leff read a statement that laid out the rationale for creating a local police force that could respond to a call 24 hours a day, every day of the year. He pointed out that the full-time force’s response time meant that a drug overdose victim had
her life saved by a local officer at a time of the morning that had previously been covered only by state police. The local force’s much shorter response time had already proven to be a lifesaver, he said.
The township had paid for the force as it increased in size over the years out of surplus funds. But Leff said once that surplus had reached what financial advisers said was the proper level, the township had to find other revenues.
The new tax was dedicated to emergency services so people would know exactly what its purpose was, Leff said. And it had been debated in a transparent way, with efforts made to inform the public so they could comment on it, he said.
Township Manager Lisa Moore said Recca was correct in saying the township’s expenditures had risen. They had doubled in the last nine years, she said. But if residents wanted to cut the budget, they had to decide what they wanted to give up. She gave the example of the grants program, which brings in millions of dollars in funding for open space, trails, and other popular features.
The public comments portion of the otherwise light agenda continued to seesaw back and forth, with supervisors and their supporters in the audience explaining how they justified the new tax and other expenses, while the group of residents who opposed them saying they believed expenditures could continue to rise, and further tax hikes imposed.
“Spending has exploded under this board, and it is unsustainable,” said township resident Gene Pisisale. He said the supervisors needed to review spending and make prudent cuts where needed.
Pisisale also offered to serve on a budget advisory committee. Board Chairman Scudder Stevens said he was welcome to join the township’s business advisory committee, which served in that role.
The supervisors and Police Chief Lydell Nolt said the tax increase was a onetime change. Nolt said he did not anticipate his budget increasing substantially. In response to a question, he said the force was in line with regional standards for local forces, and in fact slightly understaffed by that measure.