The Harris Township Board of Supervisors passed its 2015 budget with a sense of humor and a touch of modesty on Monday.
“When going through our budget, I noticed that we have about $2.4 million in expenditures and a townhouse in Manhattan goes for over $3 million,” board chairman Charles Graham said. “I guess it’s all a matter of location, location, location.”
Board member Nigel Wilson told StateCollege.com that the budget has been available for review since its tentative adoption in November. He says this year’s budget process “hasn’t seen many problems,” with mostly positive feedback from residents.
“Harris Township is pretty good at fiscal management,” Wilson says. “We have one of the lowest tax rates in the Centre Region.”
The budget does include a temporary tax increase to fund the replacement of several pieces of the township’s maintenance equipment, including the two large trucks used to salt and plow snowy roads. Township Manager Amy Farkas said the increase raises property tax rates by 0.5 mills for the next three years, expiring on December 31, 2017.
This works out to about an additional $40 a year on a home with an assessed value of $309,000, Farkas said. The increase is expected to raise over $92,000 a year for the township.
Boalsburg resident Bruce Lord told the board of supervisors that he supports the budget, and was especially appreciates the plan to create an equipment replacement fund.
The township will transfer money from the new tax revenues and other sources into the equipment replacement fund while developing a replacement schedule for all township equipment, Farkas said.
“I think it’s a fabulous idea to plan these things out,” Lord said during the public budget hearing. “It costs something like $142,000 to replace one of those trucks. That’s not chump change.”
Farkas said that the township used to have an equipment replacement fund until the national economic downturn in the late 2000’s forced the township to be more fiscally conservative. The creation of this fund represents a commitment to prevent other temporary tax increases in the future, Farkas said.
The board of supervisors also took the first steps toward creating a new maintenance facility to house the township’s trucks and other equipment. Farkas told StateCollege.com before the meeting that the current building is 40 years old, too small for the township’s equipment and not up to various state building regulations.
The supervisors reviewed maintenance facility plan proposals from three firms, including the township staff recommendation from the Fernsler Hutchinson Architecture group. However, Graham felt that the supervisors had not had enough time to review the proposals, leading the board to table the architecture firm decision until January.
The board of supervisors also set a January 5 public hearing for a request to allow taller buildings in the township. The request comes from the Mountain View Country Club, and would allow the club to expand without impinging on its golf course. The club requests that nonresidential buildings be allowed to reach 45 feet, instead of the currently allowed 35 feet.
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