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Borough Budget
It is terrible that the borough's draft budget will not be made public until a week after the election, at the meeting Nov. 13. Manager Anthony DiGirolomo blames the computers while praising the "streamlining" of the process, but what it means is that even council members (who now expect to receive the budget Nov. 9) will have very little time to examine it and debate it, let alone alter it, before they have to vote on it. Their constituents will have even less.
Borough residents have a right to weigh in on how much of their money will be taken by taxes and fees, and how it will be spent, but the process has been set up so that ignoring them will be not only easy, but almost necessary, as council rushes through the approval process to meet the state-required deadline.
Posted by:
Patricia Matson
Editor, The Phoenix
Borough residents have a right to weigh in on how much of their money will be taken by taxes and fees, and how it will be spent, but the process has been set up so that ignoring them will be not only easy, but almost necessary, as council rushes through the approval process to meet the state-required deadline.
Posted by:
Patricia Matson
Editor, The Phoenix
posted by The Phoenix Files at
5:38 PM
7 Comments:
I want to commend The Phoenix for entering into the 21st century by opening their own blog. Problems have been going on with the current administration of Borough Council from their taking control of Council 2 years ago. The paper for the most part has failed in a major way to report the short comings of council! The latest being the deliberate hiding of the Borough Budget. I agree with your current stance that the public has a vested interest in the funding or nonfunding of any peticular project and has the right to express that opinion to their local representation. Being denied that right leads a normal person to believe that something nefarious is taking place. While the paper is correct in pointing this issue out, it is late on many others. Do they not have a reporter that covers Borough Hall?
I have watched the paper intently for the past few days as they have introduced all of us to the candidates. I am wondering, is the paper actually willing to accept it's responsibility and assist in holding the current and future political figures to the fire when they fail in their elected duties?
Here is something to also consider. This is a real problem facing the next Council and there may not be a painless solution to fix the mess up. It all stems from trash fees that most of us pay. By Borough Ordinance, Council is required to pass a resolution if it wants to change the amount charged to the users of the service. It turns out that when Council set the fee this year at $55, there was no resolution drawn up and that they did the whole mess by way of simple vote. As I have just told everyone, by ordinance, you can't change the fee that way.
Now, go forward to the 3rd quarter of this year. According to the minutes of the meeting, a simple vote was made to raise the fees to $74 ish with a request of the solicitor to see if a resolution was needed. It was, and was never voted on by Council(but oddly enough, was signed and filed in the resolution book in Borough Hall). So, back to the story. On October 9th, another vote was taken to raise the fees for the 4th quarter(which reverted back to the $54 rate) to $74.50.
Why does this matter? Because the current Council never properly raised the fees and has opened the door for all of us (trash fee payers) to demand a refund of roughly $90 (if you are good at math, that is a total of $400,000 Borough wide). Council has the option to accept a full scale refund that will likely result in an increase of trash fees to $98.50 next year or they can keep the fees the same and take the money out of the General Fund as a line item in the next budget. That means that everyone gets to pay for their screw up.
We don't have a budget for a number of reasons. Probably the first reason is that nobody can follow directions. Council direct the manager to have a budget by the 22nd. He declined to do that. As a consequence, Council decided to do nothing. It is easier to spread the blame around that was.
Get out and vote on Tuesday. Your wallet may depend on it.
I agree that this year's budget process has been a disservice to the public.
If this is really the editorial view of The Phoenix, why don't you come out and say so in print, instead of just in a brand new blog that only a few have found?
Why is it that we cannot retrieve the articles about the candidates from the web site?
Why is it that only one candidate has the answers to their questions on the Phoenix web site, You guys are a joke.
On Senleys blog:
"It has come to my attention that my answers to questions asked of Borough Council candidates were not published in this morning's paper with the others, despite the fact that they were sent to the editor of The Phoenix at 9:29AM on Friday morning."
http://jeffsenley-pxv-north-candidate.blogspot.com/
The Phoenix has, in fact, reported on the budget several times, both in a news story and in several editorial columns.
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