Lower Saucon Township Council voted 3-0 Wednesday to approve a preliminary 2015 township budget that includes a one mill tax increase. If the same budget is ultimately adopted, it will become the township’s first tax hike in more than half a decade.
Township finance director Cathy Gorman explained that the tax increase is needed in part to help offset landfill fees that “are going down.”
Councilman Tom Maxfield said the increase–which will amount to $125 on a home with an assessed value of $125,000, which Gorman estimated to be about average–is both a proactive and prudent fiscal measure.
“I think this (budget) reflects council’s interest in not having the township go into any sort of downward spiral,” he said. Without a tax increase now, Maxfield theorized a higher tax increase might be necessary in the future. Additionally, the one mill hike will help ensure that residents continue to receive municipal services “to the same level that we’ve been providing them,” he said.
Resident Gene Boyer, however, questioned council members about whether or not they had done enough to reduce spending.
For example, he said, “each department head should have had to look at how they could reduce their budget from last year to this year.”
“The people of Lower Saucon are now having to have a burden of having a 22 percent (tax) increase,” Boyer added.
Maxfield defended the budget, and told Boyer he was “offended” by any implication that the township is “living high on the hog.”
“The township has to function. These things cost money,” he said, before calling Boyer’s ideas for reducing spending “a dream scenario,” and telling him to “live in the real world.”
Council president Ron Horiszny told Boyer there is relatively little wiggle room with the budget because most of the township’s expenses are fixed.
And councilman Dave Willard said to Boyer, “I welcome the dialogue. But at the end of the day, you can see we’re losing revenue, and we have to make it up someplace.”
“The goose that laid the golden egg…is going away,” he said, referring to IESI Bethlehem Landfill, which is projected to contribute $850,000 less to township coffers next year.
Willard also pointed out that although township taxes will increase under the proposed budget, they will still make up a very small portion of most residents’ total tax bills.
For example, he said his total township tax bill will increase $227 a year, or about $19 a month. With that increase, he said his township taxes as a percentage of his total taxes will increase from about 5 to 6 percent.
The decision to include the one mill increase, he said, is one “I feel we had to take.”
The preliminary 2015 budget will now be advertised and available for public inspection. Council is expected to vote on adoption of a final budget at its first meeting in December.
Councilwoman Priscilla deLeon and councilman Glenn Kern were absent from the meeting.