No tax increase in $4M budget

UPPER POTTSGROVE » The $4 million township budget now available for public inspection will not raise property taxes in 2018.

Discussion during the most recent board of commissioners meeting further indicated that long-delayed money from longdelayed development projects will also help the township to set some money aside for the future.

Township Solicitor Charles D. Garner Jr. explained that some of the additional money is the result of a dispute more than 10 years old.

When the Cross Roads project was first proposed more than 14 years ago by Richard Mingey, he originally sought between 300 and 500 units on property on both sides of Route 100.

In 2002, Mingey sued the township, charging that its zoning was defective because it did not allow for affordable housing and the township (and school board) eventually settled the suit in 2006 through an agreement called a

“curative amendment.”

The agreement cut the number of townhomes to 51 and also included a clause that the township would be paid $390,000 when the building permits were pulled.

Then the nation’s financial crisis undermined Mingey’s financing and the project stalled after construction work had just begun and it looked like that money might be lost.

Fast-forward several years and another developer, Delaware Valley Development Co., has taken over the project.

After some back-andforth about whether the project would feature apartments or townhouses, the company moved forward with construction.

Commissioners’ Chairman Elwood Taylor said he has been “keeping his eye one” that money and the conditions that would release it for many years.

Another $160,000 came about as the result of the agreement that oversaw the completion of Coddington View, off Farmington Avenue just north of Pottstown.

That townhouse project went off the rails when the original developer, T.H. Properties filed for bankruptcy in 2009, just as the housing collapse was gearing up for its full impact on the American economy.

In 2013, a new developer, Arcadia Land Co. of Narberth, took over the project with intent to finish it.

That done, the township was due $160,000 according to the 2014 legal settlement with a bonding company originally involved with Coddington View.

The combined funding is being accounted for in what the commissioners called an “operational capital” fund and can be used, Garner said, for “anything the township wants to use it for.”

Presuming the township budget is adopted without change, a home assessed at $128,000 — the township median — would pay $437 as a result of the township millage of 3.4 mills; another $38.60 in debt service and $77.20 for the fire tax.

The budget, which does not become official without another vote in December, is the seventh the township has adopted in the last eight years that does not raise taxes.

However, the 2016 budget raised taxes by 13.9 percent.