New council, old fiscal woes
Mayor, council members sworn in, but no budget changes made yet
POTTSTOWN » Borough council reorganized and its new and returning members were sworn in Tuesday night, but it did not act on its promise to reopen the budget to reduce the 12-percent tax hike adopted last month.
According to state law, a new council has until Feb. 15 to make changes to the budget, but at least one member of council wanted to get started right away.
Seventh Ward Councilman Joseph Kirkland said he was disappointed that newly re-elected Council President Dan Weand intends to wait until Monday’s meeting to appoint an “oversight committee” that will start that work.
“We’re going to lose a week,” complained Kirkland, who indicated he had already sent a number of suggestions to Interim Borough Manager Justin Keller about ways to cut costs.
Last month, a divided borough council adopted a $54.4 million budget for 2018 that raises taxes by 12 percent.
The tax hike came on the heels of three consecutive years of zero or minimal tax hikes and those favoring it promised to take advantage of the opportunity to reopen the budget in 2018 to try to further pare the increase.
Weand said he will appoint that committee at Monday night’s meeting and Councilwoman Rita Paez, who insisted last month that council did not have enough time to try to reduce the budget, told Kirkland that Monday was soon enough to get started.
“We’re running out of time,” Kirkland said.
“Come Feb. 15, when time gets tight, I want you all to remember this delay,” he said. “OK,” Weand replied. Monday is the day council will like vote to authorize the staff to move ahead with an offer from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development to participate in its “Early Intervention” program.
Pottstown went through this process in 2009 after laying off 13 employees in 2008.
The eventual report to come out of that effort contained the startling prediction that unless Pottstown radically changed the way its borough and authority government is run, that borough property taxes would jump by 75 percent; water rates by 25 percent and sewer rates by 19 percent in the next five years, years now in the past.
Property tax millage in 2009 was 5.2 mills and the report, conducted by Ohio-based Management Partners, warned it could jump as high as 9.08 mills unless something was done.
Millage in the budget adopted last month is 11.58 mills.
In 2009, Management Partners’s 141-page report concluded the borough’s primary problem was the continued erosion of the borough’s property values and the assessment challenges which follow — a problem Weand said repeatedly last year and repeated Tuesday night could not have been predicted.
The 2009 report contained 122 recommendations, several of which the borough administration implemented, designed to save $370,000 a year.
Among the more radical of these, was a suggestion to merge the public works department and the borough authority, eliminate the position of public works director and eliminate the communications and dispatch arm of the police department.
None of these recommendations were adopted, although the dispatch arm of the police
department was reduced in this year’s budget, due perhaps to the Montgomery County takeover of all emergency dispatching.
The new study has a value of $80,000, said Keller, and the borough will cough up $16,000. The state will help identify and hire an outside consultant to conduct a financial and operational audit of the borough with an eye toward cutting costs and aligning revenues with expenditures.
Weand said that as council president, he wants to continue leading Pottstown “on the path of progress” and said his top priority on council will be economic development.
Pottstown Area Industrial Development, the agency which is the borough’s primary development vehicle, was the one contribution council did not cut during its attempts last month to lower the tax hike.
In addition to returning Weand to the council president’s post — there were no other nominations — council also unanimously elected Second Ward Councilwoman Carol Kulp as vice president.
Finance Director Janice Lee was returned as council’s treasurer and Ginny Takach as council’s secretary.
Charles D. Garner Jr. was returned to his post as borough solicitor and Cedarville Engineering will serve as the borough engineer as well as the engineering firm for the planning commission.