U. Pottsgrove Budget Won't Hike Taxes, Sewer Fees

The good news is it doesn't look like there will be either a tax hike, or a sewer rate hike in 2020.

The bad news is I had to sit through a nearly three-hour budget session in order to type the above sentence.

Ouch.

But that's why they pay me the big money right? So you don't have to sit through it.

So here are the basics:

• The overall draft 2020 budget calls for spending $3.5 million, with revenues of $3.2 million;
• The draft has a $365,387 operating deficit;
• But the budget also has a $1.4 million reserve;
• Not surprisingly, the draft calls for using money out of that reserve to cover the deficit, rather than raising taxes;
• The sewer budget calls for spending $2.4 million;
• The sewer budget also has an operating deficit of $469,891
• The sewer budget also has a surplus of nearly $700,000, which will be tapped to keep from raising sewer rates, already the highest in the region;

The largest single cost to the budget's general fund is the police department, with expenses of $1,688,535, which represents a 10 percent increase over the current budget.

Police Chief James Fisher said the 2021 budget will likely include another increase of at least 5 percent, depending on how much new equipment is needed. Driving police department costs are the 3 percent pay hike officers will enjoy in both years thanks to their contract.

Fisher himself, hired earlier this year, will not get his 3 percent raise until 2021.

Punctuating the discussion were the two varying views of budgeting which were highlighted in the most recent election campaign which ended Tuesday with a victory for the Republican candidates.

Longtime commissioner Elwood Taylor, who lost his reelection bid, continually pointed to the surpluses enjoyed in the general, sewer and open space budgets, noting that the township spent a little over $200,000 of the sewer reserves "to get $1 million worth of new pipes."

Taylor said "it doesn't exactly sound like the sky is falling to me," by way of getting in his last licks to defend his record.

On the opposite end of the budget philosophy spectrum was Chairman Trace Slinkerd and Vice Chairman France Krazalkovich, who argued that proper budget means expenses should match revenues and that relying on surpluses will eventually run afoul of changing demographics.

For example, said Slinkerd, as the township's median age gets older, the currently robust earned income tax revenues the township is enjoying will begin to fade.

I'll spare you the rest of the rhetoric.

Here are the Tweets from the meeting with some more details for those interested in that sort of thing:

Upper Pottsgrove Talks Budget