Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to this meeting of the Middletown Township Board of Supervisors. Would everybody uh please stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance. stands nationy and justice for all.

Well, tonight uh we are thrilled to welcome the uh Sanberg Soundwaves Choir from Carl Sanberg Middle School. The choir was last year's B101 Christmas choir competition winner. The choir was last year's B101 Christmas choir competition winner with their song Carol of the Bells. They also have won plenty of awards at the Ava Tama Jam Festival and Maple Point Acappella Festival. They are excited to perform for you all tonight the Star Spangle Banner and their rendition of Pennies from Heaven. So, if everybody could please first stand for the Star Spangle Banner.

[applause]

Every time it rains it rains from heaven. up upside down. And if you hear thunder and every time it rains you know cloud contains every cloud contains your fortune falling

all over town. All over town all over town. Umbrella upside down. [music]

[music] [music]

And you'll find your fortune fall [singing] and me. All right. So, next, uh, we would like to welcome select members from the Carl Sandberg Concert Band. Our band members have performed at a variety of educations, uh, sporting events, including the Philadelphia Flyers, and are expected to perform at a Sixers game this spring. Today they will be performing a variety of Christmas carols for you to enjoy. Uh, please welcome the Carl Sandberg Concert Band.

[music] [applause]

There you go. Lou. [snorts] [applause] Once again, let's have one more round of applause for the Samberg Sound Waves and the Carl Samberg Concert Band. [applause] We'll pause for just a moment so that anybody who is here for the performances uh can make their way out.

Press it here. Right. Yep. All right, let's uh resume. Miss Corpal, would you please call roll?

Mr. Kizak, Miss Hannah, she's on Miss Hannah is here remotely. She is texting Mr. Balo and I as we move through the meeting. Miss Kaine here. Also in attendance tonight, we have township manager Mr. Ratliff, assistant township manager Mr. Vala, township solicitor Mr. Espazito, township engineer Mr. Kesler, chief of police Joseph Barterelli, director of building and zoning Jim Andis, I hope so. I didn't see him, but I think he's here. [laughter] He's here. Director of Parks and Recreation, uh, Paul Capera, Director of Finance, Laura Hucklebridge, and Director of Public Works, Eric Guard Meer.

Uh, thank you, Miss Corpal. We have a few upcoming meetings and events. The first is a special meeting on Wednesday, December 17th, 2025. Uh, that'll be at 7 p.m. here. And then we have our, uh, first meeting of January 2026 will be our reorganization meeting. our new supervisors will be sworn in and we will reorganize and make appointments. That will be Monday, January 5th, 2026. Uh also 7 p.m. here. And then our next regular meeting uh for regular business after that will be Monday, January 12th, 2026, also at 7 p.m. here in the public hall. So, uh once we start off in 2026, our first meeting will be reorganization January 5th, and then the 12th will be our uh first meeting for regular business. So, that moves us to special items, and we actually have um two very special items tonight. The first is uh recognition of our own township supervisor, Dawn Corpal. Um for those that don't know, Dawn is finishing out her term uh and will be leaving us at the end of the year. So, I just want to take the opportunity to say thank you, Don. Um you have been an incredible public servant, um an incredible member of this community, an incredible colleague. I've enjoyed working with you so much and your dedication to the residents of this township and to your community is really unmatched. So, thank you, Dawn, for everything. We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Mike. [applause] [snorts] Uh, Miss Hannah um is not in the room. Her daughter is performing a solo tonight, a choir solo performance, which is why she'll be here a little bit later, but that's why she's not on Zoom at the moment. But she did want me to to share this. Um, she just wanted to take a moment to thank you for all your amazing service to Middletown Township. Your dedication and kindness have really made a difference and you've been such a great support to me as I figured out my role as a board supervisor. I truly appreciate your friendship. As you move on to your next adventure, I wish you all the luck in the world. I know you'll be making a big impact wherever you go. Thanks for everything from Bernardet. Um, you want to say

I just say thank you for all your service for the past six years and I wish you the very best. Thank you, Dana.

And we do have a couple tokens just to express our gratitude and appreciation for your service to the community, Mr. Valor. Um, so I'm just going to say a few words. First, I wanted to say it's been an honor to serve as board of supervisors for the last six years. Um, it's really been a learning experience. I will say it was my first real experience in politics and um I had a lot of people help me through the way and um first of all Anna was um my running mate and even though she was much younger than me she really showed me the ropes and um she was my teammate the whole way through and I couldn't have done it without her. So um she was real special and I'm thinking of her a lot today since it would have been our our uh you know ending up together today. Um, so, um, but I'm going to talk about her later, too. Um, I wanted to thank everybody. Um, first of all, I

want to say how fortunate we are as citizens, um, of Middletown to have the staff that we do here. Um, I it's been really eye openening to see how dedicated the staff is and how much work they put into making our township such a wonderful place to live. Um I wanted to thank she's not in the room but Miss Tulie Kouls who was our my uh super I'm sorry was my township manager when I started really helped me with um Nick showing me answering all my questions and I didn't know what was happening guys you'll see that they'll be guiding you along the way um Eden came and he's been great I know he's going to be a fantastic manager for Middletown and his heart is is really in it and um you know I wish him great things here I want to thank Mike you've And you know, you helped me along the way. Me and Anna, you were our guide the whole way and you've been here with me the whole time. And um some of the managers we've had, Amy Strauss and Tom Tosti, and I thank Bernardet and um Dana for their support on the board. And um I also wanted to thank the all the residents that have reached out throughout the years. um some thanking us, some you know wishing us well, some you know emailing us with concerns or um anger and and that's all good. Um it's good to reach out to and I hope you continue to be engaged. I want to thank all the residents that show up at the meetings and have thoughtful comments and um have concerns that they want to share and are really engaged and and do that work. I I hope that you continue to reach out to the board of supervisors and to the staff members here with your concerns in in a uh informative and um helpful manner. And I do want to caution um I've seen a lot of just mean things not only in the world over the last six years but unfortunately here in our

township and a lot of that is on social media and I've stopped being on social media. have stopped engaging because of some of the nastiness that I've seen. And I want to caution people to not always believe what's on there. And sorry if this isn't, but I need to I want to caution people to not always just believe what they see on social media and take that for the word. I want them to find out the real facts. Email anybody on this board. I'm sure they'd be more than happy. staff members will be more than happy to give you some answers, engage, sit down with you. So, please do that. Um, and and not just um name call or, you know, say, you know, start star people and getting them engaged in in a negative way. I think we're all we all live in this township. We all want the best of everybody. And um I implore you to to do that, to reach out in a positive way. join the boards, come to meetings, and see what's really happening in the township. Okay. Um, and I want to wish everybody uh happy holidays and um stay safe over the next Thank you so much, Don. We still have one more meeting to get through.

Um All right. Um the the next item um is one that is very near and dear to all of our hearts. As I think everybody knows, we um lost one of our colleagues uh Supervisor Anna Payne far too soon. And so I am pleased uh as the next agenda item to present for consideration adopting resolution number 25-30R renaming Cobalt Ridge Park to Supervisor Anipane Memorial Park. Mr. Valad, do you want to share the details? Sure, I would be happy to. Um, as folks are well aware, uh, Supervisor Payne, uh, served, uh, with Supervisor Corpal beginning in 2020, um, and unfortunately, uh, passed away earlier this year in February. Um, and as the current board has, uh, evaluated ways to recognize the legacy of Miss Payne. Um, the board um, came to the conclusion that they felt renaming Cobalt Ridge Park, which is the neighborhood where Miss Payne grew up and was raised, uh, was an appropriate way to honor her legacy. Thank you. Um I really can't think of a more fitting tribute. I think it's important that Anna's um legacy live on and I think this is something that um she would be happy about and um I just I think uh that park bearing her name u forever is just just really appropriate and the right thing to do. And so I'm thrilled that we're able to do that. Um we are going to uh we'll have a new sign um to rename the park. We will have uh benches there and um hopefully at some point we'll make sure Dawn can be there. Um once we have everything done, we'll have a a more formal event to officially cut the ribbon and open the the renamed park in honor of Anna. So um I will certainly invite everybody to come out there and be there for that. Um Miss Corbal, do you want to make the motion? I'm gonna sit here.

All right. Sorry guys, didn't have this up. It starts here. Okay. I move to adopt resolution 25-30R renaming Cobalt Ridge Park to Supervisor Anna Memorial Park. I will second. Um, are there any board questions? There's been a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Hannah says Miss Hannah says I.

Thank you. Carries 4. So, uh, resolution number 25-30R is adopted. Cobalt Ridge Park will be officially renamed Supervisor Anna Memorial Park. [applause] something.

All right. So, Hannah um Miss Hannah actually sent me something because she knew she um wouldn't make it here. So, I just want to read that as well. I have something that I wanted to state also. So, Miss Hannah says, "Tonight, we take the opportunity to celebrate the renaming of Cobalt Ridge Playground to honor our dear friend, Supervisor Anna Payne. Anna was a true champion for our community. Known for her strength, compassion, and kindness. She always put others first, especially those who needed a little extra support. She was a great leader and friend. I want to remember Anna's spirit and commitment to helping others. I encourage everyone to continue her legacy by finding common ground and showing compassion every day. We miss Anna dearly, but her light will always shine through this playground and in our hearts. And I'm going to just state something. I'm mine's not as elaborate. um not as beautiful, but I just want to say how happy I am that we're renaming this park in honor of Anna tonight. Um as you know, Anna grew up in Cobalt Ridge, and this was a really special place for her. She was really excited when this park opened. I actually remember um us talking to Paul about it, and she was really excited, not only because it was going to be in her neighborhood, but this was going to be the first inclusive park in in Middletown, and that was something that really mattered to her. Um, so this is really special and I couldn't think of anything more meaningful than renaming this park in honor of Anna. I really hope that um when families go there, they think of Anna and they think of her memory. Um, she really meant something special to this community and I hope that she's looking down and smiling on it and I hope you will enjoy going to this park in memory of Anna. Yeah, I do just want to note that uh Anna's family and some friends were here tonight specifically because of this. So, I want to thank you guys for being here. It's uh really special and really happy to be able to do this. So, thank you very much.

All right. So, that takes us to public comment on non-aggenda items. Is there any public comment on non-aggenda items? Just come up to the uh podium. We don't have a sign-in sheet tonight, so just come up to the podium and state your name and address. Yes, sir. Yeah, hold on a second. The microphone's not working. Testing. Testing. 1 2 3. Okay.

Okay. Is that better for everybody? No. Still not working.

Sorry, Mr. Cahill. Technical difficulties. I can hear you, Mr. Cahill. I just don't know if people who are online are going to be able to hear. Good. Testing one. They won't be able to hear. So, we want to make sure that we get the microphone situation figured out. Testing one, two. I can hear it. Good. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, we're good. Okay. Sorry about that. Go ahead.

Okay. So, I got a chance to view the documents and uh it looks like the loan was for $794,000. Am I correct? I don't have the number memorized, but that sounds like it's in the ballpark.

Yeah, I I thought it was for more like 500,000. I was shocked to see that it was for for almost $800,000. So my question is is that Pendle Fire Company qualified for an almost an $800,000 loan with basically no income. The only income was from these mailers that they put out their donation drive. So, [clears throat] I'm a little confused on how the fire company could qualify for a loan on 25 to $30,000 a year from a fund drive mailer. Uh, they had to be they had to use they had to use other other monies that they were getting in order to qualify for that loan. So my question is, were they using truck fund money to make their to make their payments to make their loan payments monthly? It looks like it was about $5500 a month their payments. I don't understand how you make them without without any uh without any income. So the only money that they had coming in was from Middletown Township and Pendel Burrow. And Pendel Burrow, the money that they were getting from them was $54,000 a year. And then you had the budget money coming from the township that was just over $100,000. And you had truck fund money. I'm not sure what that number was.

So are are you asking you're asking us? I don't I don't know the answer to how Pendell made the loan payments on their loan. I didn't I don't know the answer to that. Okay. I mean that's you should ask Pendell Fire Department that that question. You keep you keep directing me that way and I couldn't get anything. I I I can't get nothing from the Pendle Fire Company. That's why I put the right to after you did theou to uh to become joint owners of the tower. That's why I put the right to no request in for the loan documents. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we've we've we've we've honored [snorts] or considered all of your right to know requests. I mean, I I'm not trying to hide anything from you. I don't know the answer for how Pendal Fire Department made their loan payments.

I see a lot of warranty stuff in the loan documents that I gotten, but I'm not seeing anything that shows what they listed as income in order to qualify for the loan. Am I missing something in the documents?

That would have been in the application of the loan documents, which we weren't we don't have. Okay. So, when I had my meeting with Stephanie in August of last August of last year, 2024, I asked if the fire company was using truck fund money to make their loan payments. And she said that, and Nick was there, Nick can verify what I'm saying is true. She said that she didn't care if they were using truck fund money to make their payments. So, I put in a right to know request for a copy of the um uh the um the vote that the supervisors would have taken in order to uh allow the fire company to use truck fund money. Because according to the contract, the fire the the fire companies are only allowed to use truck fund money to buy a new piece of apparatus or refurbish a piece of apparatus. So, did the supervisors vote at some point to allow the Pendell Fire Company to change the contract to allow them to use the truck fund money to make the payment?

I I don't know. Is anybody else authorized to make a change to the contract and allow them to make I'm I I'm sorry. I'm not understanding your question. I You're So, did you approve? Did the supervisors approve? Excuse me. Yes. Can I help you? Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. You're you're fine. I don't understand what's going on here. Um, does the what is it? The what is the fire company that you're talking about? Pendell Pendell Fire Company. Okay. Isn't the Pendell fire company under your purview? Don't they have to report to you? No,

we have Why? They do. They're a separate They're a separate organization. They are not part of the township. We have a contract with them where they we contract for them to provide volunteer fire services to the township. I'm sorry. So I think your question is did anybody change the contract regarding how truck fund money could be spent? Is that the question? Did this did the did the five supervisors vote to make a change to the contract to allow the Pendell Fire Company to use truck fund money to make their loan payments? Uh, not to my knowledge, but I don't I mean I would have to go back and that that would be required. I don't I don't know the answer to that

because the managers can't just tell people they they can't they can't make changes to the contract because they're not elected. You're the elected officials. You're the ones that make the approvals. I I would have to look at the contract to to know the specific language that you're talking about to tell you to answer whether or not what you're describing violates the contract or not. I don't know the answer. Um, do you have contracts? No. Wait a second. Wait a second. Ma'am. Ma'am, just one person at a time. So, you can't both be at the podium. If you're gonna be at the podium, then he's gonna have to step down and you have to take turns. We have to follow protocol here. And you always have to state your name and address. And so, let Mr. Cahill finish and then you can have the podium. Sorry. You're good. I I was just trying to help. Yep.

You can come up. You're free to come up and talk when he's done. I just want to give Mr. Cahill the floor and then you'll have an opportunity. Oh, I'm sorry. You're okay. So, I don't know the answer to your question. I can tell you that there was no vote by the board of supervisors since I've been on the board of supervisors specific to what you're asking. Um, as far as what the contract says about the truck fund and whether at any point in time, there was a board vote regarding that. I can't answer that historically, but that's something we could try to find out for you. So the only thing that I would if I could just add to the conversation is that the apparatus plan does contemplate an aerial being funded and ultimately purchased by Middletown in 2025 which is what happened here. So that apparatus plan is a second doc se separate document which I think we've discussed before.

The truck I believe the truck was bought in 2020 according to the contract you're talking 5 years ago.

Balance of the loan was paid off in 25 which is what that plan contemplated. Yeah, I and I get that. And we had a conversation uh I guess it was last week at your uh at your town hall for the budget and um there's just some there's just some things that aren't making any sense. So um I guess my question would be was there a misappropriation of funds by the Pendell Fire Company? And it would be about a quarter of a million dollars. I I'm only figuring four years. This might have went on for almost five by the time you voted in theou. So, uh, is are any of the supervisors cuz nobody really wants to, uh, pipe up about what's going on here, but was there a misappropriation of a quarter of a million dollars on the part of the Pendal Fire Company because there was no authorization by the supervisors to allow them to use truck fund money to make their payments. They they didn't have enough. there was not enough income for them to make these $5,500 payments.

Yeah. I mean, you're making those allegations. I don't know if that's true or not true. I don't know that they misappropriated funds. I have no knowledge of anything that you're saying. You're making allegations against them, but they're just allegations. So, I Yeah, but wait, whoa, whoa. I I don't want to say that I'm making allegations because Stephanie told me that she didn't care if they were using truck fund money to make Okay. Stephanie doesn't Stephanie doesn't work here anymore and I was not in that meeting. That doesn't listen that that doesn't matter. It sure does. Stephanie doesn't Stephanie doesn't have doesn't speak for me. I didn't say that to you and I wasn't in that meeting. I don't know how Pendell Fire Company made the payments that you're referring to. I don't know what funds they used to make those payments. So, I don't I can't validate your statement that there was a misappropriation of funds. You've made that allegation. I understand that, but I don't know that to be true or not true.

So, I asked the supervisors to look into this numerous times because of the the size of the loan. I couldn't get the documents that I was looking for to find out how much the loan was. And now I finally got it. And there's more questions that there were before because the loan was almost $800,000. You That's You're entitled to have questions if you have questions. You have no answers. None. There are zero answers. Dawn. Dawn. Six years. Really? Six years? We're not Middletown. We're not Pendal Fire.

Yeah. Listen, that's the excuse. That's the only thing that you can come up with. That's the only answer that I'm getting. Can I ask you a question? You don't you don't live in Middletown. You don't pay taxes in Middletown. Why do you care how Middletown appropriates its funds or how M Middletown's funds are used? I don't understand why you come here week after week as a non-township resident cons overly concerned about the use of funds that are not coming out of your taxes. I I'm not I don't understand what your motivation is. You're going to be getting ready to hit me with a big bill for full-time firefighting through Middletown Township.

You don't live in Middletown Township. No, but you're going to be hitting me with a big bill in Pendelle because you're going to try and uh you're going to [clears throat] try and merge all these fire companies together and you're going to be the lead township's going to be the lead in the you're making an effort to try to take down the Pendell fire. No, no. Listen, that's not that's not what I'm doing. I'm not against I'm not against emergency. No, my problem is is when somebody lies and they don't tell the truth and they get something they should have gotten. Let's assume you're right in Pendle. department. My question is, was it a misappropriation of funds by the Pendal Fire Company by using truck fund money to make their payments? Cuz I can't see You've asked a hypothetical question.

I can't see them making their payments any other way. Yeah, but that's that's that's fine that you can't see it that way. You've offered no proof that that's true. You've made accusation after accusation, but you kindly left out the part in the loan documents where what was listed as income in order to get the loan and it should have been all part of it should have all been part of it.

Complain to the bank that approved the loan if you don't think that they had enough income to approve the loan. I I mean I can't answer that question. I didn't sign their loan documents. The township didn't sign their loan documents. We didn't give them that loan. I don't have any information about how they made their loan payments or where that funding came from. I don't have answers to those questions. And now because of theou now that that vehicle now that is jointly owned by the township. You're getting ready to vote tonight on a tax increase for the Middletown residents. Correct. There's a budget vote tonight which there's a whole a budget budget vote. You're raising t you're raising taxes everywhere. Everywhere. No. Not not only are you raising taxes, but you got everybody with the trash contract. And then

what does that have to do with you, Mr. Cahill? You don't live in this township. You don't you don't pay that trash bill. You don't pay. It's a big hit. And there might be some money missing. Quarter of a million dollars. It's not your money. You don't live here. I like Oh, it doesn't It doesn't matter that it's not my money. Mike, your answers are getting worse. I've answered your questions. Your answers are getting worse. I've answered your questions. You know, you can keep coming and I've answered your questions. Thank you. [clears throat] Ma'am, you want to go next? Um, just please state your name and address.

Sure. Um, okay. My name is Joanne Emsley. I live at 184 Lower Orchard Drive in um Lower Orchard section of Levittown, which is part of Middletown Township. So, I do pay taxes. Um I was really hoping um I really don't understand how township government works and I was hoping that I could get some answers because I've seen some articles that have been concerning to me just broadly. Um, and it seems like um you want to increase the earned income property t income. I'm sorry, I'm nervous. Um, you want to increase the earned income tax and you want to increase property taxes. Is is am I am I correct in in saying that?

I I don't Well, first of all, if you're asking questions about the budget, that's an agenda item which is coming up later in the meeting. So, this is only public comment on non-aggenda items. So, if you have questions about the budget, I would say, can you please save them for the budget discussion? Because at this point, there hasn't been a budget proposed to be voted on. So, when you say you want to raise taxes, we haven't gotten there yet. Okay. Um, I'm not saying you can't speak. I'm just saying if your question about the better time to talk about them is when we're talking about the budget. No, I understand what you're saying. Um, can I ask another question that I don't believe is on the budget but Yes. or or not on the budget but not on the agenda? Sure.

Okay. Um, it's my understanding that we have a deficit. Is that true? [laughter] Yes. I think that's you're again that's it's a budget issue, but yes. Okay. No, but but what what I want to know is how is it possible for us as a township, a a a small community really, um to have a deficit? Like I understand that the federal government has a deficit because they have the ability to print money, but at Middletown Township, we don't have the ability to print money. So,

can I just answer the question quickly? So, how how do we have a deficit if we don't have like a Visa credit card that you're running it up on? I mean, well, yeah. Okay. So, we will cover all of this later in the agenda when we talk about the budget um and proposed um tax changes to the tax rate for 2026. Uh but just to give a broad overview, the township has um reserves both in investment funds, capital, and then the general fund. And so for the past several years, the total revenues have been less than the total expenditures and that has been subsidized by the existing reserves or in sort of so it's kind of like an emergency fund. So there is money there

account sort of like a savings account in the general fund because we have an emergency fund that we often refer to as a sewer sale money and that's about $42 million that sits in a separate investment fund. We sort of call that our rainy day fund. Um but the general fund has a surplus. that's had a surplus for a number of years and we've used that as a township um to offset the increase in expenditures um that are greater than the total revenues we received year-over-year. The reason that we're looking at a proposed budget for 2026 that adjusts that and sort of brings that back to zero is because that general fund is getting down to what we call our our fund balance minimum of 25%. There's a fund balance policy the board of supervisors adopted many years ago that says that our total expenditure should be um at least 25% of that total should be kept in general fund reserve and we're reaching that number in January. So we're looking at sort of a level setting year to sort of get back to to balance. So we'll be talking about all that later. But that's sort of the 30,000 foot overview.

Okay. Um can I can I just say one other thing and then you can shoe me away. No, no. I I don't want to shoot you away. I want to give you every opportunity. I just want to make sure we're going to be talking about all this stuff a lot. I I I it's just it's it's it's a little overwhelming how much stuff is on the agenda and I don't exactly know how these meetings work. So, if you can bear with me, that would be great. Yeah.

Okay. Um the other thing is that I am retired at this point in my life. I'm 66 years old and we just got our social security increase for next year. And I just wondered if the [clears throat] board of supervisors is taking that into consideration when they're raising property taxes and so on and so forth. Um that the people that are collecting social security aren't really I think there's like a $31 increase for next year and I think you're planning on increasing things more than $31. So the the first answer is of course we consider that. I mean nobody nobody wants to raise taxes. We live here too. We don't want to raise taxes. That's not anything anybody ever wants to do. Believe me, there's no politician in history that ever wanted to raise taxes.

Um what we are going to be talking about tonight is the the needs of the township, the the expenses of the townships, right? So, I I use this analogy not a lot, but if you think about your own household and your expenses, and if your bills are going up, you need more income, more revenue to pay those bills. Well, the township's bills have been going up and going up and going up. And we haven't increased taxes for 10 years. And so, the problem is, and the reason why we're now facing a deficit is because we're now in a situation where the expenses are higher than the money that we bring in on an annual basis. And when we talk about expenses, what we are talking about is the cost of our police force, cost of fire, cost of public works, the people that were out there plowing the streets, um mowing the lawn, taking care of parks, all the things that your community pride provides to you. And you called this a small community. And in some ways, it feels like a small community, but there's over 40,000 people that live in this community.

Oh, yeah. I know. I'm just I'm just saying it's small compared to compared to the federal government.

Yeah. Compared to the federal government, that's all. But we are we are facing a scenario as a government where in order to keep providing the level of service that the members of this community have become accustomed to. Um we don't have enough money to continue to sustain it and we have tried for a long time to cut things where we can rein in spending where we can rein in. Um, we've we've and I'll let my colleagues talk when we get to that point, and again, we're going to talk a lot about more about this later, but the reason the proposed budget includes the tax increase is because we believe we've reached the point where there's nothing left to cut without fundamentally changing the quality of life in this community. When I say fundamentally change the quality of life, I'm talking about not enough police officers to protect us and keep our community safe, not enough firefighters to fight fires, not enough public works employees to keep our roads clear. And so those are the types of changes that we would be facing if we don't find a place for more revenue. So nothing's been decided. Um nobody's voted on anything yet. We're here to talk about it tonight. There's been a proposed budget. We spent a lot of time trying to introduce that to the community and get feedback from the community u to help us make the decision. But at this point, nothing has nothing has happened. Um we're we're just talking about it. So that'll be there'll be a lot of discussion about that uh a little bit later in the meeting. And so I mean if you have specific questions and or more questions as we get into that I mean by all means I mean I welcome your input and your feedback.

Okay. Um one one other suggestion for the future like you're we are where we are now is why are we waiting until like this time of the year um when it's the holidays and people aren't going to be engaged. Why aren't we doing this earlier in the year? We've been doing this since August. Yeah, we started in August. We've had a whole bunch of meetings since August. We've had Okay. Well, this is the first one I've been to.

Yeah. I So, the the first answer to your question is this is the budget calendar that we don't create. This is when we have to pass a budget every year. That's just the law. We're forced to follow that calendar. But we've been trying and I mean we can always do better, but we've been trying really really hard since the summer to try to get the message out to folks that we had a very difficult budget year coming up. We had public budget workshops. We had uh Eden and I did a Facebook live event where we took questions live from people on Facebook. We had a town hall last week where residents could come and talk to all the department directors face to face and ask them questions about why does park and wreck cost this much? Why does the police department cost

Yeah. Everything seems so expensive. I mean, my husband and I ran a business as a small business. Um, and like I thought those numbers were big. I mean, I opened this budget and they're just they're eyepopping. [laughter]

Yeah. Trust me, when I started on the board, it was eye opening. But it's it's that's why we say stay engaged because there was a lot of information given out over the last couple months. But it is you're right. It's it's it's enormous numbers that we're talking about. We are. But I did want to point one thing. the EIT if you're on social security that's not earned income correct. So that's not going to affect um the earned income increase if that passes wouldn't affect somebody on just getting social security. Okay. Would it affect my husband if he's working part-time and he's 66?

Depends on where it it really depends on a lot of factors. A lot of a lot of different townships. Does he work in the township? Live in the township. So then yes it would it would affect him instead of the 5% he would be pay 0.5% he would pay 1%. A lot of our residents work outside in different districts um that are already collecting 1%. Okay. Okay. It's just it's a lot to take in. Yeah it is. And that's what last week it's a shame we had a town hall and people were able to meet and see exactly how it would affect them if the the proposal went into effect. I I would just ask you to stick around if you can.

Oh I I plan to stick around. We're going to provide a lot more information. Hopefully, Eden's going to present the budget. So, I think you'll hear a lot about all of this and then I mean, come back up if you have more questions. Okay. I It's just when that gentleman was asking questions, like my my my first reaction was we we can't speak to that. We we don't know. Um and that's a unique issue because he's talking about the Pendell Fire Company, which is not part of the township. They're a separate independent organization. And so I But aren't they part of the township? No, they're not. They're not. They're not even in the township. They're in Pendell Burough.

They're an independent nonprofit. So the township has a contract with them that provides funding for their operations about $125,000 a year. Uh and then additional monies, which is subject of some debate around apparatus. Um and Mr. Cahill, who we've all gotten to know really well, has come to every I've never met him before. He's been at every meeting for over a year and it's sort of an ongoing conversation. So So can I ask you a question? Sure. Like Middletown Township is parts of Levittown. It's not all of Levittown. That's right. And it's also Langghorn Langghorn Burrow. Not the burrow. Not the burrow. Separate. Langghorn Burrow is separate. Pendelle Burough is separate. Langghorn Manor is separate. Humeville is separate. Okay. Can you tell me what makes up Middletown Township?

Can we have someone in tech pull up a map of the township real quick? Sure. And I I can do that right now and I'd be happy to answer the question. just cuz I look at it as um like I I was born here. I was raised here. Um so for a little perspective, Middletown Township is the largest secondass township in the Philadelphia urban area and it's the second largest in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Um it's got one of the largest budgets for a township in Pennsylvania. Okay. Um I mean it's it's not an insignificant community. So our budget is about $53 million when you consider all of our operations and capital needs. Um

Okay. But it's it's not like I I'm kind of looking at it and I want you to understand what a lay person sees is um like I went to Shamony school district and I I was in the first graduating class from Maple Point. So the school district is separate from the township as well. That's a whole But but see that go to the the shamin school district that don't live in middle town. So it's Yeah. See, I didn't understand that. I I'm thinking the shaman is um is Middletown. to that. I'd be happy to talk through the

I'd be happy to talk through the map that's on the screen here. So, sorry about that. Uh, so what you're looking at here is a map of the township. So, for those who are familiar, I'll just kind of work north on down. So, north is the general boundary is the New Town bypass, which abuts New Township. um on the eastern side. So on the right side of the screen there, uh the township borders lower Mayfield kind of in the northeast and then Falls Townships, uh township line on the northern end, which then it kind of eventually jogs to Bristol Ora Valley Road is generally the eastern boundary of the township, right?

Um once you get further south into Levittown, the southern portion is Bristol Township. So Levittown as a neighborhood is split between four different local governments. So Middletown, Bristol Township, Falls, and Ty Town. It's a little confusing even though your address is lava town, right? It is. And then if you're kind of continuing clockwise around the map, you have Ben Salem Townships on the other side of Namin Creek is Ben Salem. And then kind of in like the Feasterville Trios area is a lower Southampton township. Yes. Nam Namy school district. You're right. Yeah. But it is another municipality. And then lastly kind of northwest or the top left of the screen is Northampton Township. So the middle town borders seven townships and within the township you see those kind of holes in the middle as uh Mr. Keyzak shared there's four burrows or those are four additional local governments. So the middle town borders 11 different separate local governments.

Okay. So is there is there any purpose to making it so complicated? You'd have to ask the folks that carved us up a great question. [laughter] As professionals in local government, we ask that question a lot. It's a long-standing question. Oh my gosh. the Commonwealth government for a long time. Some of these codes have not been updated from decades. Um, yeah. I sort of joke in this field, having worked in other states also, that Pennsylvania sort of loves government. Everywhere you turn, there's another government.

Yeah. And like I would just like to be able to contribute some common sense solutions, what I consider to be common sense solutions. Um because my husband and I did run a business and and it is hard work. It is hard work. Maybe now that you're retired, you should run for local government. Um well, I actually met good people. I actually met Ryan who is going to He just got elected. Well, we always need good people to get involved in the community. So, and I had a I had a very nice conversation with him. Good. Good. So, again, if you don't mind, stick around for the budget conversation in the I'm sorry.

No, don't apologize. We're happy to have you here. Thank you. I just didn't understand and I I want to learn how this works. This is the place. Okay. Thanks. All right. Other public comment on non-aggenda items. Yep. Come on up.

Okay. Okay. Blake Haymon, Oakidge Drive up at Summit Trace. So, going from one end of the township to the other. [laughter] Okay. uh in reference to her wondering about the other municipalities, just think of it as a donut. Middletown surrounds everybody else. Uh I worked in New Town for numerous years and the line between New Town Burough and New Township goes literally through certain addresses. Uh is Mr. Cahill still here or is he gone? He'll he'll watch it later.

Okay. But um Okay. I was in a number of numerous volunteer organizations over the years. I can understand his frustration and I can understand where you as the township representatives are. A lot of people do not realize as you said that you guys basically have a handshake, monetary agreement or whatever with the different organizations, but they are separate organizations. And I don't think a lot of people understand that. Uh, the only thing I'm going to say to that is sometimes if you do make donations, they should be earmarked for certain funds and they the township should have the control on it. I'm not getting into what Mr. Cahill was talking about. But I just wanted to let you know that a lot of people don't understand that. Uh, I understand and correct me if I'm wrong. Parkland is the only fire company that is geographically located within the township. Correct.

Correct. Lang Horn has a substation in the township, but they're incorporated in Langghorn Burrow. That's right. Correct. Uh, now I if I'm getting off budget, tell me. Okay. Now, when it comes to workman's comp for them, is the township paying or is it based on the fire company that if somebody, god forbid, if someone gets hurt, we're paying the workers comp for all four companies, the township population, correct? With contributions from the burrows who they also serve. So that that's a fairly recent development that um I think maybe in the last couple of years, three years. Yeah. So the township is now contributing to the workers comp along with the other municipalities that the fire companies service.

Okay. And would that also been also would that contribute to the um Pendell Middletown as well? The Pendle Fire Company? Yes. No. No. The Pendell squad. Oh, the EMS squad. Correct. Uh I don't believe so. There's a small portion paid, but it's a little bit of a different relationship there.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Other public comment on non-aggenda items. Okay, let's move into the consent agenda items. They are as follows. Consideration of authorizing payment of December 15th, 2025 bills list in the amount of 3,834,55044. B. Consideration of approving the November 17th, 2025 minutes of the public meeting of the Middletown Report of Supervisors. C. Consideration of authorizing severance agreement and general release. D. Consideration of authorizing a memorandum of under of agreement uh with the Middletown Township Police Benevolent Association regarding the existing existing heart and lung policy. E. Consideration of authorizing the township manager to enter into an agreement for a new electricity supply contract. F. Consideration of approving change order number one for 2025 CDBG8A curb ramp replacement programs in an amount of $48,173.60 60 cents for reduced quantities and G consideration of approving payment certificate number one final for the 2025 CDBG uh ADA curb ramp replacement program in the amount of $110,200.15. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda items?

I'll make a motion to approve all consent agenda items as read. Thank you, Miss Corpal. Is there second? Second. Thank you, Miss Kane. There's been a motion in a second. Any board questions? Any questions from the public? Yep. What up, Joe Fitch? 346 Wyoming Avenue. Um, I guess one question is is why do you guys vote on it and approve it and then ask for our input? Um, we didn't we made a we made a motion and a second. Okay. We didn't pass it.

So, the curb thing I I mean, we got to do something about this. I mean, we got to find new contractors or something because the amount of money that we're paying to put a a handicap curb in is is is ridiculous. I mean, what are we paying? $15,000 $12,000 for Yeah. for one curb. Yeah. So, [clears throat] it's it's around 8500. Uh, and we're actually pretty happy because the um price per curve in 2025 was better than we've gotten in previous years. So, the bids came in competitive compared to previous years. I I 8,500, right? And

yes, and just to clarify what you're looking at on the agenda, what you're seeing is item F is to reduce the total uh bid cost. So essentially when the contractor put in a bid, they you know, basically make a um it's based upon the expected quantities. And so what you're seeing there is their actual quantities ended up being less than that. And so the amount that the township is actually paying is under item G, which is 110,000, which if you are doing the math back from the original award, is a reduction of $48,000. So this is actually probably one of the least expensive years for curb ramps that the township's had in recent years, but yes, it is rather expensive if you're not familiar. I

I mean, call me insensitive or or or whatever. I I mean, why do we need them? I I mean, we're required to by the ADA. Federal law is the answer. I'm I'm I'm a four-time back surgery recipient with a problem with picking my foot up and tripping myself and falling and everything like that. And thank God I'm not in a wheelchair or whatever. But, you know, what did I do back in 93 when this happened to me? You know, you either walked up somebody's driveway or or we didn't have curbs or or whatever. My neighborhood, we don't have curbs, so I don't have to worry about it. But you will. I mean, I I hear you. I sure hope we don't. Not in my neighborhood. It's a mandate. We have to We've got to put them in. It's It's federal law.

Well, yeah, you have to put the handicap ramp in for where there's sidewalks. But I I mean, no, we don't have sidewalks in my neighborhood. Um, but again, you know, whatever we're paying is is ridiculous price for for the repair.

I'll just point the law also requires that uh ADA ramps are up to the standards of the ADA. uh the ADA standards that were from 2010. Uh you can't repave the roads if they're not in compliance as well. So that's why the township has separate contracts and tries to stay ahead of that. Uh but it's not just improving accessibility. It also allows us to come through and repave the roads uh effectively when we're doing the resurfacing programs. Yeah. Thank you, Miss Kesler. Yes, you have a question.

Hi, I'm Joanne again. I live at 184 Lower Orchard Drive and I have to agree with the gentleman that lives in the gates where they have no sidewalks. Um, [laughter] the other thing that I've noticed about all these handicaps, and I understand it's ADA compliance and so on and so forth, but I have to tell you, my mom is 92 years old. Um, she owns a house in Highland Park and you know what she absolutely hates is all the little bumps because it makes it hard to go with a walker down a ramp with Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Do you want to explain that, Mr. Kesler?

That's a They call it a detectable warning surface. It's for people that are blind and have trouble uh, you know, are visually impaired. So, it's to let them know they're approaching the street when they get to the corner. So, I understand that it's it's bumpy. It's very hard for my mom and it's just like I don't know if there is a way to make like everybody happy with this ADA compliance thing. Well, again though, we don't we don't we don't the specifications are provided to us. We don't we don't decide them, right? We have to follow them. No, I understand that. But but you also have the ability to to appeal things and make other suggestions, don't you?

Federal government doesn't care what Middletown Township has to say, unfortunately. Yeah. This is a federal uh um law that the ADA uh act that was passed for on the federal level. So, as a local municipality, we we do have to comply with all those requirements and the state also requires them through PENDOT.

Okay. It just seems like my husband and I noticed like every time we turn around, like my friends live in Cobalt Ridge and every time we turn around, they're ripping it up and they're putting it back in and it's like every other year they're doing this and it's like it would be nice if you guys paid for our sidewalks. like we're we're paying for these little rampy things, but like we have to pay for our own sidewalks, but like you only seem to be concerned with the curbs and the handicap accessible things. Yeah. Again, it's not what we're concerned with. It's what the federal law says we have to do. Okay. So, if the federal law didn't exist, what would you do?

Oh, I I'm not going to answer that question. I know it's a hypothetical and you're a lawyer. Clarify one detail. The sidewalks themselves are the property of you as the property owner. It is not township property, but the essentially the on and off of the uh sidewalk where the curb ramps are generally located uh is something the township does is responsible for, but the just the general sidewalk along somebody's residential property or even a commercial property is generally that property owner's private property. Okay. Um are you guys familiar with New Falls Road and Lower Orchard? Um, there's a section. I don't I don't know why they did this, but they put a sidewalk because of people get hit by cars. Is that why?

Okay. They put they put a sidewalk and then they don't cut the lawn. That's res. Uh, no. It's it's if you're trying to come out of the section, it is a problem because you can't see the oncoming traffic. But the resident is supposed to cut through this. Yeah. The residents are responsible for the cutting their own grass. Yeah, but it's not it's it's not their sidewalk. I You're I don't You're Does the township grass? No. So, generally speaking, if you're talking about like And it's weeds. It's not even grass. You're talking about like the strip between the sidewalk and the curb. Yeah.

Yeah. That is generally still your own private property owner. Okay. So, why did the Okay. So, the government paid to put sidewalks in so that people don't get get killed or get hit by cars, right? Yes. The county did fund the sidewalks on New Falls Road. Okay. I'm going to have to let that percolate. Sure. And I'd be happy to chat with you in greater deal detail on that offline if you'd like. And I don't want to get we're getting a little bit off because we're right now we're on a motion to approve consent agenda items, which is a very very specific agenda item. We kind of went down a rabbit hole there. So, do you have any other questions about the consent agenda items? Um, curbs are not negotiable, right? Correct.

Okay. But again, that's we're not we're not voting to approve or not approve curbs. This is just a change order which just deals with we're getting back. Yeah. Okay. But but look for look for better contractors. Any other uh questions from the public? All right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Miss Hannah says I.

Carries 4. Next uh item on the agenda, consideration of preliminary and final land development approval for a 3,483 ft expansion to the Walton Performing Arts Center building and other improvements on the George School campus at 1690 Langghorn Newtown Road, New Town, Pennsylvania. TMP22-00004-004SLD number 25-09 RA uh 2 RA3 zoning district. Yes, Mr.

Yes. Good evening. Uh you have a application proposed in front of you for an addition to the Walting Walton Performing Arts Center in the George School campus. It's a land development application. Uh just really briefly giving you an idea of where this is at. Uh you see on your screens that is the George School campus. In that circle there is the existing uh Walton Performing Arts Center, their auditorium. If you can go to next slide, please. I think it's a slide. You go. That is the existing building as it stands today. Um it is roughly between 15 to 20,000 square ft in size. If you can go down to the next slide. And as you can see, the uh darker, I guess we say yellow is the actual proposed addition as well as a uh plaza area and other uh uh grounds improvements surrounding the building. Uh with that, the uh application did go in front of the planning commission uh during their November 5th meeting. Uh they found no objections to the requested waiverss from the subdivision and land development ordinance. The application was thoroughly reviewed by township staff and consultants and it did receive a recommendation of approval uh from the planning commission during their November 5th meeting. Uh there are representatives here from the George School uh to uh answer any other questions or cover any other details uh that aren't covered right now through this introduction. And uh you most importantly you do have the uh recommended uh motion in your packets uh as stated within uh Mr. Isaac Kesler's memo. Uh, with that I can uh defer to the man that's looming behind me, the frequent flyer, uh, Mr. Ed Murphy.

Thank you, M. Uh, Mr. Andis. Thanks, Mr. Murphy. Um, I guess the most important factors for me at least are that this um, this development is entirely within the campus of the George School. Yes, correct. and that um there really will not have any current or really future impacts on the adjacent community or township roads. Is that accurate? Also correct. And Mr. Kesler, that's confirmed by your office as well as the township traffic engineer.

Correct. Yeah. And I'll I'm sure they'll uh touch on the the waivers that they have as part of the request, but most of those are waving requirements that usually um are dealing with how a property affects the neighboring properties. Uh so most of those waiverss would be really non-applicable because it's all within the campus itself and George School is its own neighbor in this uh particular project here.

Thank you. Um do you want to talk about the waiverss just briefly? I can, but to your point, all we're doing is improving handicapped and otherwise accessible facilities, creating a more pleasant outside gathering area before you go into the performing center. We're not increasing the capacity of the center at all. It is completely unaffects any other adjacent property. The waiverss, as Isaac mentioned, are pretty technical. There's seven or eight of them. Uh Isaac's office has supported all of them. Your planning commission has supported all of them. I don't know that we're advancing the public interest by talking about each one of them, but we can, but

No, that's fair. I mean, I reviewed them and I've reviewed Mr. uh Kesler's uh comments on all of them. I don't I don't have any other concerns. I don't know if any of my colleagues have questions or concerns. And the planning commission did favorably recommend approval subject to our ongoing compliance with Isaac's review. So it is, I think, as simple and straightforward as a application as you can have.

All right. I will uh make a motion to grant land development plan approval for the George School Walton Performing Arts Center lobby expansion and renovation SLLDD number 25-09 with the following conditions. Applicant shall comply in full with all requirements of the Middletown Township subdivision and land development ordinance and the Middletown Township zoning ordinance unless unless the relief was granted by the body having jurisdiction and uh also any remaining review comments shall be addressed in full. Is there a second? Mr. Keys, just to clarify, you're proposing preliminary final development approval. Right. Sorry. Preliminary and final. Yes. Is there a second? Second. Question on motion. Okay. There's been a motion and a second. Are there any board questions? Questions from the public? Yep. Okay. Call up to the microphone, please.

Okay. Okay. You can you can address Mr. Murphy or Mr. Andis. Just make sure you're speaking in the microphone. Okay. I got a question about how long I live over in Summit Trace. So, uh, how long will the construction be? What are you looking at timeline on construction? Mr. Murphy, can you repeat his question, please? Well, I was my question was timeline on construction. Timeline on construction. Thank you. Um the hope is that we could commence construction in the spring or early summer of 2026 and would be finished by that same time period the following year if not sooner but certainly from the spring through at least the end of 26. Okay. Thank you. Other questions from the public? Yep.

Joe Fitch, 346 Wyoming Avenue. Um, this has to do with, I guess, their building and and the storm water. Um, I I know they have an exemption from paying their storm water fee, which is a little ridiculous. Um, they're trying to be a good neighbor or whatever. They're increasing their impervious surface, which is now going to push more water downstream, you know. So, I I I don't know why we can't do something or try to figure something out. I know there's the lawsuit going on with Westchester and and charging them, but you know it it they got a ton of property on there, ton of impervious surface, and then adding more is just going to push more water down the hill.

Yeah. Can you address Mr. Kesler and then Mr. Murphy, either one of you actually? Well, none of that's true by the way, but Isaac,

you can talk storm water that was included with the land development uh plans. They included their uh storm water report and all the calculations. So what they're doing with this project is that it'll have storm water new storm water features for the added impervious uh and it you know meets all the requirements. They also uh have a few things that they have as conditions of approval. One of which is uh MPDES permit which is through D. Uh the other is a operations and maintenance agreement. Uh that is an agreement with George school being the owner of the property and the township. And that is uh basically the the document that provides how often and they have to maintain it, what they have to do to maintain it and have it work effectively. If it doesn't uh meet those uh maintenance needs, the township can uh either do it themselves and and send the cost to to George School or, you know, pressure them to obviously keep up with the on&m agreement. So,

and that and that's all fine and good. You're talking you're talking about the current building but what about all this is for previous all the previous impervious surface from all the over other years that you know the doesn't require them to go back decades. It focuses on the existing condition and how that affects storm water and what they are proposing to do to not increase anything that's currently you know there now. So they're meeting all the salary requirements as far as storm water accounting for anything that they're adding to any existing conditions.

No, I I just feel that we should look into deeper to see about getting them to pay the storm water management fee also. Other questions from the public? All right, seeing none, there's been a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed?

Carries 4. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Renis. Uh, next on the agenda, the uh, presentation of the comprehensive parks, recreation, open space, greenways, and trails plan and consideration of adopting resolution number 25-27R. Mr. Graham. [clears throat] Good evening. For those of you in the audience who don't know me, my name is Patrick Graham. I'm the assistant director for parks and recreation. Uh over this past year, uh the Middletown Parks and Recreation Department went through the process of updating our comprehensive plan. This plan establishes our department's mission and vision while providing roughly a 15-year outlook that helps us to guide decision-m process uh for the township as it relates to our parks and rec system. The last time our department updated our comprehensive plan was in 2005. So, it was time for an update to be done. So, this can be a useful tool for us over another 15 to 20 year period in our uh planning. Uh so, throughout the last year, the township worked with Simony Collins consultants on this plan. Um there was extensive public outreach. We did a survey that saw about 1,600 responses from our residents. Uh multiple public meetings, uh steering committee meetings, focus groups, and key person interviews. Um, this process of public outreach helped our consultant team and our steering committee ensure that this final plan was actionable for the township staff as well as a plan that is driven by the needs of our residents. I have Bill Collins from Simony Collins here who's going to go into some detail for the board tonight to just give you an overview of um the plan. But before I pass it off to Bill, I just want to thank a few folks. I want to thank all the members of our steering committee uh and for their contributions and um

I don't I don't know what just happened but that that just that sound just got weird. Am I good now? Can it still sound weird?

I can hear you. We're okay. You all right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, um like I said, I want to thank all the members of our steering committee uh for their contributions and commitment to the process. I wanted to thank supervisors Hannah and supervisor Kaine who were both a part of the process every step of the way and your feedback uh was invaluable to the outcome of this plan. Um also want to thank our colleagues in the parks and recreation department for their hard work. Uh the team from Simony Collins for their guidance and work on delivering this report and as well as all the residents who participated in the process. um your feedback and direction was um was key in making sure like I said that this is reflective of the needs of our community and uh a plan that works for for our future. So with that I'm going to hand it off to Bill Collins who's going to go over uh the report for us now.

Great. Thank you very much. Collins [music] advances. Thank you.

Good evening. Um, [clears throat] my name is Bill Collins. I'm principal at Simony Collins and um, thank you for your time and kindness and patience. Um, [clears throat] Patrick, thank you for the introduction. Um, I'm just going to go through some slides quickly so that if there's any questions, we can answer. This is a good news agenda item. your project steering committee. Um, great committee to work with. Uh, a lot of people who knew a lot about the township and the recreation system and, um, what was rare was that you had two supervisors represented on the committee very actively. Thank you, um, supervisors Hannah and Kane. It meant a lot to us for to to u perform the work. [clears throat and cough] This is where we're at. Um that was the project schedule. All the meetings. Um this was the public engagement program. Three public meetings for steering committee meetings. We had a focus group as Patrick mentioned over 1,500 people responded to the survey. that was really good, especially um compared to the multimodal that we had done the year before. I think people really responded to open space and recreation as important to them in the township. I'm [snorts] going to go over these re very high level. [clears throat] There were six visions that emerged out of the planning process. Um one was accessible, safe, and modern township parks. parks linked to neighborhoods by safe pet and bike routes. And this is where the parks plan overlaps with the multimodal plan.

Recreation programming excellence. Middletown Township has done that for decades and the vision is to continue that increased availability and access to open space. And in a township that's largely developed, access becomes very very important. There may be ways to add uh add open space in parks, but utilization of what you have is is probably most important. And then efficient and sustainable management, maintenance, administration. Um you have a great staff. um like to thank Patrick and um Paul and Joanne and uh Nicole for their help during the project. [clears throat] And then, [clears throat] excuse me, township policy and ordinances that support recreation with funding strategies that achieve not just recreation but multimo multimodal and multi-purpose uses. And sometimes projects can do more than one thing. So, how do we implement this? Um, there's a couple um key strategies. ones make the improvements over phases. Um don't expect to do everything in one year and um most of the projects won't happen in one year. And um recreation is a element that's common with other public facilities. Sometimes it overlaps with environmental or civic or transportation projects. Um and this can be an advantage when you're looking for money and match matching and leveraging your municipal money.

So what we did was we or organized um the implementation and and time timetable for projects that leaves the township all of its flexibility. There there is no prescription in the plan that says this project has to be done this year. It's a menu. Um and [clears throat] the projects are organized to low cost, medium and high cost. the high cost would be um a million dollars. And we we picked that because that was a number where we thought um a combination of grants and and um municipal money could be combined to do a a viable project. They're organized um by [clears throat and cough] excuse me by the visions So things that are that are considered um generally and Middletown has been uh very successful in uh pursuing and securing grants in the past, but there are a number of considerations for project how you would prioritize projects over the next 10, 15, 20 years. Um and these are a list of the things. I'm not going to read them, but they're all involved in the strategy that the township can use every year to figure out what it wants to do the next year. I'm going to leave it there um [clears throat] and uh be happy to answer any questions. I want to thank you, Mr. Collins, for your effort. I want to thank Mr. Graham for all your efforts and everybody who was on the steering committee and and all the residents from the township who participated and provided input and feedback. Um this is tremendous. One of the things I really like about it, you described it as almost a menu of options and I like that analogy because what it

does is

it gives the township options, right? And so as we're going year to year, obviously within the budgetary constraints that we have at that particular time, we can look to this and see what options we have relative to our financial situation at that time. You mentioned grant funding. Obviously, we talk about this over and over how unbelievable this township is with in terms of um identifying, applying for, and ultimately getting awarded grants for for park and w programs. And so that's great that that's a component of it. And I think the really the the most important thing maybe about this is um the priority considerations, right? It gives us a a guide book as we're moving forward into the future, we now have a sense of what the community wants and would like to see. And so as we're trying to plan, we have some framework to help us make decisions. And that I think that was really at the heart of of what this was about. So you did a great job and we appreciate everybody was involved.

Thank you. And we appreciate your community. We had a really great turnout. Um, a lot of great ideas and they are reflected in in the report. Yeah, it's great. Um, other my colleagues have questions or comments for Mr. Collins or Mr. Graham. I just wanted to say thank you and um I agree with you. We have amazing residents and they are very passionate about our community. So, it makes it a pleasure to do this work. Thank you.

Thank you very much for um helping us with this. I know, you know, I'm up here talking about greenery and open space a lot. So, um, this is a subject that's that's near and dear to to me. So, thank you for the the considerations that you've taken. I think you were able to take some of the resident ideas and really map them in well um and provide us a good vision for the future.

Thank you. And um, anytime you need us, give us a call. And I I that would be remiss if I did not thank Supervisor Hannah and Supervisor Kane for participating in the effort. Um I think it is it is good and important to have representation from the board participate in the process. Um it's good I think for them to see firsthand, you know, what the process is like and what residents have to say. And I know that was a time commitment. So I appreciate you guys doing that. Thank you everyone. Thank you. All right. Um, next on the agenda, there's a Did you want to vote on the plan? Yeah, that's a good idea. [laughter]

Thank you. Um, does anybody want to make a motion?

I can make it. I uh I move to adopt resolution number 25-27R adopting the Middletown Comprehensive Parks, Recreation, Open Space, Greenways, and Trails Plan. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Miss Hannah. Uh there's been a motion in a second. Any questions from the board? My only question, I know we advertised this. Have we received any feedback from any residents on it? There was a follow-up survey done after uh we went through the editing process and we put that out a few times via our uh social media and email on the website. We got about 60 65 responses from the public. Just a lot of it positive and some people had other ideas they wanted to see incorporated. So we did add that into the the final plan. Anything that was uh relevant to to be incorporated.

Other board questions, questions from the public. Yep. Joe Fitch. Um, so my question is is how did you guys pick the residents to talk to or discuss or sure

get input from? So it was done via public survey through survey monkey. So we had put it in our program guide that's mailed out three times a year to all the residents um through social media on the township website. Uh as far as like the committee goes, the representation on the steering committee was a combination of um stakeholders that we work with uh through the sports organizations like Middletown Athletic Association, uh Langghorn Athletic Association, um residents that live in different parts of the township that we've worked with that live near certain parks. Um and a couple of our colleagues that are uh also parks and rec directors that live in the township were a part of the committee as well. I I live one house away from Delaware Park and I know none of my neighbors have been approached or anybody came to them to say, "Hey, you know, we're looking to do some stuff in your parks and and stuff." And and I hear the word grant, which is great because, you know, it's free money, but it's not free. It's coming out of my pocket through the federal income taxes anyway. Um, you know, but is is there any organizations that, you know, we can help get on board to do some of this stuff like the Boy Scouts for people getting Eagle Scouts or any flower planting clubs or

Yeah. M Well, Mr. Bicycle clubs or whatever that want to do stuff. Mr. Graham can address that, but I want to just address your first point. There was a tremendous amount of outreach that was done by the township. Mr. Graham, I think, was a large part of that. I mean, and we every anybody and anybody in the township who wanted to could participate, and we had a tremendous uh response. So, I'm sorry that you or your neighbors didn't see it, but it was on social media. It was in the the programming guide that goes to every household in the township uh multiple times a year. U we talked about it at these meetings every month. So, we we tried to let folks know that this was out there and available for people to be involved in. I I get that. I mean, you know, you can't hit everybody. can't knock every door.

But but again, you know, there's how many houses right near this and and you know, with with it being in a flood plane and stuff like that, I I guess I thought there would have been a little bit more contact with the papers that are im or people that are immediately affected by it. Yeah, that's fair. Sure. Um it is a a wide ranging report and plan. So I mean it does incorporate though park, you know, obviously into the

Well, I believe parks a toilet bowl anyway, [laughter] you know. Well, to also answer your question about, you know, obviously um with Boy Scout groups and and those kind of folks, we obviously will um always reach out to them and work with them on projects. So, if you have anything in mind, you can reach out to our our office. Any other questions from the public? All right, seeing none, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed? Carries 4. Thank you, Mr. Graham.

Thank you. All right. Next on the agenda, consideration of enacting ordinance number 25-06 amending the storm water impact fee ordinance for property owned by homeowners associations. Uh Mr. Bal, take this one.

Yes. Thank you so much. Uh we discussed at the last board of supervisors meeting a change that is recommended by the storm water advisory committee. Uh this is a very specific change targeting um property owned by homeowners associations. There was a concern that was raised uh specifically about uh members who or residents who live in a homeowners association for paying their individual residential bill as well as the corporate bill um for the impervious area um owned by the homeowners association. And the committee recommended to the supervisors an amendment to the ordinance to eliminate um essentially any parking or sidewalk areas or roads that are owned by the association from the calculation of imperous area which is the basis for a non-residential fee in this case. Um however uh homeowners associations with um amenity facilities such as a clubhouse um any sort of like sports courts um and any parking specific to those facilities that would still count as part of impervious area. Uh the township of engineers office has uh prepared us a list uh and so assuming the board wants to move forward with that uh piece of legislation tonight, the township is prepared to um approach uh those small list of property owners to address uh that change.

Yeah. Just uh just I guess for some additional background, obviously I think residents are aware that we do have a storm water advisory committee made up of uh members of the public um who advise the board on storm water issues and it was their recommendation that we make this amendment. Also, I think the the financial impact to the township um if we move forward with this is relatively modest. Is that true? Yes. A few thousand dollars and it's essentially deferred or loss revenue in this not paid. Um any questions from any board members?

If not, I can accept a motion. I move to enact ordinance 256 amending chapter 428 of the Middletown Township Code of Ordinances to eliminate streets, sidewalks, and residential parking areas from the calculation of imperous surface area for properties owned by a homeowners association. Thank you, Miss Kane. Is there a second? Second.

Thank you, Miss uh Corpal. There's been a motion and a second. Any board questions? Questions from the public? Yes. Hello board. Gail Tibido, Paxton Lane Langghorn. Um, I have several friends that live in HOA communities and I was at the storm water advisory committee meeting where this was appealed because I just wanted to clarify that people that live in HOAs are pay being asked to pay the storm water fee of $60. But then the association was also asked to they were they were built like I know uh commons at Middletown down here by the Pendel bowling alley was charged I think $6,000 which in essence comes out of the home you know the homeowners pay the condo fees. So So is that going to be eliminated and they're just going to have to pay one storm water fee?

Yeah. Can you Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. So specific to that property, the individual homeowner, so even in a condo association or a condo form of ownership, the individual residents are got the $60 bill just like any other homeowner in the township did. Um the current way that the ordinance is written, uh it was implemented that a any basically any property that is not one residence received a bill based upon the amount of impervious area, the amount of square footage that can't absorb storm water. And so specifically the example of the commons at Middletown, they received a bill that was at that ceiling that the ordinance contemplates, which is a $6,000 a year cap. Uh specifically in that case, because all of the impervious area that neighborhood has aside from the residences is all private roads, private parking, and sidewalks. They're specifically that example, they would not have a corporate storm water impact fee. It would just be the individual property owners that have a fee. is true of just about all of the HOAs with the exception of uh two of the eight restricted communities if I'm speaking correctly to that.

Okay. Thanks for the clarification and I'm happy to hear about this. Any other public questions? All right. Seeing none, uh we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed? Carries for zero. Thank you, Mr. Val. Uh, next on the agenda, we have consideration of enacting ordinance number 25-07 increasing the volunteer service tax credit for volunteer firefighters. Mr. Bell, again, sure. All right.

Thank you very much. Uh, so before you tonight, supervisors, is uh yet another ordinance to amend an existing uh piece of legislation. So currently the uh code of ordinances allows for a tax credit of up to $500 per year from either the real estate tax or the eat and that is up to so if you have a tax liability that's less than that uh the credit is less than that and it is currently um eligible for any certified volunteers uh that participate in any of the five local volunteer emergency response organizations are four fire companies as well as our rescue squad Uh currently uh there are two categories that you can qualify under. There is a an hours of service provision uh primarily that administrative personnels or non emergency responders typically will qualify under and there's also a percentage of calls at 25% of response uh that um specifically uh anybody who's providing the emergency response would typically qualify for. Uh what is proposed for you tonight is anybody who is specifically a first responder. So, anybody who is a volunteer firefighter um that the tax credit be uh they are availed of both real estate and EIT and that it is 100% of their tax liability. So, if somebody has a a $1,000 tax liability, they'd be eligible for uh a full credit. Uh and that would be effective for this current volunteer year. So, we are currently working through applications. Uh there is a deadline working through with the EIT collector, but we are prepared to administer that change for the current volunteer service year. Importantly, the financial impact for that is about $35,000 per year. Um the service that these active volunteers, which there's about 40 of them uh across the four volunteer companies we have um is tremendous. One full-time firefighter in Middletown Township is about $140,000. Um so I often say that these volunteers are sort of worth their weight in gold with the service that they're providing to us. Um so any way that we can um work to retain them and the service that they're providing, we certainly are interested in.

Yeah. Well well said. I mean, that's absolutely the truth. And I think, um, as we've gone through this process and working with our volunteer fire companies, um, and doing what we can to make sure we keep them viable, um, because obviously, as we've talked about, if the township were forced to provide professional fire services without the volunteers, it would be a tremendous burden to the taxpayers, $140,000 a firefighter, um, clearly. And so the one thing we've heard loud and clear from our volunteer companies is that you know um as time has gone on and this isn't a local crisis. It exists everywhere but there's um difficulty with not only attracting new members but also retaining the members that they have. So my feeling is anything we can do to help these companies attract and retain members. Um, that's a good thing because that's good for the residents of the township in the long run because it's not only are we supporting these phenomenal organizations uh who keep us safe and protect us and our property um but we are also um saving money to be blunt about it. So, and and really the impact um for taxpayers in terms of the the taxes that wouldn't be paid as a result of this program are are pretty nominal. And I think since this was enacted in 2024, I think we've had pretty good response from the volunteer companies about um how it was received. So I think this is um a nice amendment and I think it's something that we should definitely do for our volunteer firefighters. Any uh other board members have questions or comments uh for Mr. Val, Mr. Ratliff for anything else they want to say?

Yeah, I would just I I would agree with everything that uh Supervisor Keyzac just said. Um, also just to to really kind of push the point, um, uh, Eden, what how many firefighters would we need if we did not have the volunteers at the township?

That's a complicated question um, because it is important to sort of for ISO purposes um, figure out essentially what we want our effective force to be um, and our ability to maintain certain levels of incidents on our own before mutual aid. um off the cuff, I mean I would say it's more than more than 25 more than 30 full-time employees and that's just beginning the process you know it grows from there as you sort of start to design that company and figure out um you know what its capabilities are against automatic and mutual aid

right so doing that math multiplied by the ones 140,000 it's it's significant so these volunteers are providing us a significant value so everything that we can do as a board that helps the volunteers stay these companies stay viable and allows them to, you know, somewhat benefit from from doing this work is important.

All right. I will uh move to enact ordinance number 25-07 increasing the volunteer service tax credit for eligible firefighters to 100% of the township real estate tax and earn income tax liability for volunteers who respond to at least 25% of the calls for emergency service to which the agency responds that will take effect uh for tax year 2025. Is there a second? Second.

Thank you, Mr. Corpal. Has been a motion and a second. Any board questions? Any questions from the public? Mr. Fitch, hats off to all the volunteers. They're fantastic. I don't know how quickly I would want to run into a fire or something like that, but is there any other possible future opportunities for people to volunteer that maybe be past the age limit for firefighting or have handicaps or you know stuff like that that to give back to the township? Anybody from fire services in the audience tonight who might want to come up and address that? Anyone? Anyone? Mr. Welsh. Mr. Welsh. [laughter] [clears throat]

administrative side. How you guys doing tonight? Hi. Um, so to your point, is there opportunities to volunteer? I would say there's opportunities for anyone to volunteer from admin to the actual firefighting portion of it. If you wanted to get involved today, I'm sure you could go down, fill out an application. They would be happy to have you. They really do save you guys a significant amount of money, especially in tax money. If anybody's interested, if you don't know who your fire company is, reach out to us. We'll point you in the right direction and get you to the closest company. Any questions? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the public? All right. Seeing none, all those in favor say I. I. Opposed? carries 40 zero. Okay. Um so that concludes uh the agenda items up into the 2026 budget. So what we're going to do uh since we've uh been going for a couple hours here, we're going to give everybody a quick break. We're going to take a short recess um and then we will be back. Um let's aim for like 10 minutes uh maybe 15 and then we'll begin uh agenda item 12 which is the budget. So we are in recess. [clears throat and cough]

We got a problem.

All right, I am going to call the meeting back to order. Thanks to everyone for your patience. Um, so we now get to agenda item number 12, which is the uh 2026 budget items. So, um, I'm going to start out, Mr. Ratliff, if you wouldn't mind. I know we've been through this a bunch of times, but if you could just um give us an overview of the proposed 2026 budget, please.

Thank you. Good evening and welcome. I think this is the moment many of us have been waiting for, the 2026 uh annual budget presentation. So, uh I'm going to go through a brief overview of what has been proposed. As you heard, I think Miss Corpal say earlier tonight, we have been dealing with this since um August. So, welcome to our process. If you are just joining us, hopefully you have been a part of our process all along and are here for just a recap. Uh so, a couple things I'm going to go through. This is a very similar presentation to what we uh experienced in November when the budget was formally proposed to the board of supervisors and public. Uh so I'm going to run through it, but we'll be available to answer every question that the community and the board has. So we're going to talk about process and timeline, sort of where we've been, where we are now, where we're going. Uh I'm going to go over the story of the budget, talk about what that investment looks like, especially on the capital side. Uh what happens if we don't act. Uh I think a lot of people here sort of understand that this is a tax increase budget that is proposed. So, we'll sort of talk about the pros and cons of options there uh and then what the next steps are. So, budget process and timeline. The uh Middletown Township has an internal budget team that's been working with the board of supervisors and community to review uh everything that is in our existing operating and capital budget as well as every proposal uh from our department heads and from our external partners as well as sort of assumed increases. So, in the budget there are often assumed increases. We didn't want them to be assumed. So we sort of went through a due diligence process to evaluate those. Uh this is what the meeting calendar looks like. We are at the end of the process. It's December 15th. The final budget is slated for approval here by the board of supervisors. We started back in August in a public process with a capital budget workshop. Uh rolled into September where we had um a similar meeting uh where we started sort of reviewing things internally. Uh and then in October, every Monday in October, uh we went through revenue, operating capital again, made presentation of the proposed budget in November, had a town hall meeting here last Thursday or two Thursdays ago, um with the community to

sort of review different things, and then we are here for final adoption uh hopefully tonight, tonight. So, uh, where we've been, the township, um, I brought last time I presented this, um, every budget book from 2018 has talked about an operating deficit, uh, within our budgets, which just means, as you heard me explain earlier, uh, that we have been spending out of our general fund reserves. We've been relying on investment returns in order to fund our operations and our capital. Uh, making one-time transfers into the general fund and the capital fund to make things look balanced. uh they are balanced in terms of total amount of money out the door, but they're not balanced structurally with the amount of onetime money coming in year-over-year against the same expenditures um in that budget. And so what that means is that our expenses have been growing faster than our revenues, which creates structural deficit emerging over several years. Uh this year's structural deficit is $2.8 million and that grows by about a million dollars per year. Uh I have colleagues in Bucks County who say things like your deficit is larger than my total budget. Uh so sort of just giving magnitude to what we're talking about. So the warning signs, like I said, go back all the way to 2018. Uh these are sort of all of the written materials that we provided to the public as well as public presentations where that's been talked about rather explicitly. Um last year's budget book says, I'm just going to read a a quote here. Middletown Township will enter 2025 in a position of financial strength, which is true within accumulated fund bounds exceeding 58 million. However, second sentence in the book, two key challenges have emerged in our budget discussions over the past six years. A structural deficit in the general fund and an absence of dedicated funding source for capital fund. When most people think about a municipal budget, they think about sort of what is the budget doing for me? And often that is capital, right? It's roads, it's sidewalks, ADA ramps, um you know, all of those things are sort of capital. It goes on to talk about the structural deficit and how that's growing. You've already heard me say the $2.8 million number. So, where are we now? uh a good graph that sort of shows

uh what our capital fund revenues and expenditures with that fund balance look like. The line that's moving through this presentation uh is sort of our income and loss and you can see sort of how that's changing over the years. Uh you heard me made reference earlier to a fund balance policy that the board of supervisors has adopted. It says that we need a 25% balance in our general fund of our total year expenditures. Uh that's not a random number. That comes from the Government Finance Officers Association. Uh Middletown Township is AAA bond rated, which is an incredible feat uh for this community. Um that really is a testament to our internal controls, our financial infrastructure, and our financial health. Uh it's policies like that that sort of help us achieve that. Um to continue deficit spending in 2026 would put us in violation of that policy, which has a lot of domino consequences uh for us to consider. So it's what it says here at the bottom. Reserves are not a sustainable long-term funding source. It's like spending out of your savings account and never replenishing your savings account. [snorts] So, where are we proposed to go? Responsible measured revenue adjustment for long-term stability. Um, this is sort of the hotly debated point, right? 6.08 millillage real estate tax increase, which is about an average increase of $179 per year uh depending on where the assessed value of your home. uh we have a chart somewhere around here uh that sort of talks what about what that number is depending on your neighborhood within the township and then an increase to the statutory maximum of earned income from 0.5% to 1%. Uh again this is uh towards people who are working um it's not social security income which is sort of the nice part. I was talking to someone at our town hall who said tell me one person who would be happy about the increase in earn income tax. I said our retirees. He went oh that's really a good point. I said, "Yeah." I said, "The retirees will be happy because they're not paying the earned income tax, assuming that they don't have some sort of um you maybe part-time job on the side or something like that." Um but that is all designed to sort of help balance this budget and investing capital, which we'll talk about.

Uh so just a chart that sort of shows kind of where we are. Um the I think I have a pointer here. Yeah. Uh so here is the good times and this Okay, so I'm just going to walk to this because this chart's not working. So this sort of gap here that I'm pointing out where it says surplus, this is the last time we raised EIT, right? So that's a surplus that sort of says our revenue was exceeding our expenditures. We had really good times rolling through here where we were investing in capital. Good things were happening. This dip is COVID. We all remember that really challenging time for everyone's budget. There's a bounce back from COVID where we say, hey, things are are looking better. We're back to into that de deficit uh with no real sign without additional revenue adjustments to deal with that deficit uh which we're proposing to deal with in the 26 budget. Uh so just another chart uh that sort of shows what the general fund income looks like loss by year uh and where we're trying to get to with the the line going across being zero. Uh so here's that chart I talked about. Uh I'll give you a few minutes to well not a few minutes maybe 15 seconds or so um as to what the average real estate tax summary looks like as it relates to the other taxes that you pay which is of course the Bucks County and the Namid School District. Uh as well as what that average looks like. We picked out a few neighborhoods around the township um so that you can sort of see here what it looks like now in 2025 and what the impact would be in 2026 uh with the 6.08 uh real estate mill increase proposal. You'll see that the largest tax rate here is the school district, second to Bucks County, and the smaller number is Middletown Township. This is sort of similar to what we were discussing earlier. Give me a few more seconds to look at that chart. [snorts] Okay. Anyone else looking? Good. Okay. So, what will this budget fund? Uh we're looking to do 9 miles of road paving in Levittown next year. Uh that's about $2 million in investment. More

than 75 ADA curve ramps are placed across Cobalt Ridge and the Iverream neighborhoods. Ivertream I'm really excited about that. Was paved a number of years ago. uh and the ADA ramps were not complete. So, we've heard from a few uh quite a few people in that community who are saying things like, "I I need mobility access. I need to be able to get off the sidewalks and I literally can't." Um if you walk around there, that neighborhood alone is $250,000. Three times the amount of storm water inlets replaced. I hear from a lot of residents who say, "I'm paying this $60 storm water fee and I'm not happy about it. What are you doing for me?" We are proposing to do more storm water investment in 2026 than what the actual fee revenue will uh fund because that fee revenue is important for both storm water drainage work as well as storm water quality work. Uh for those who maybe haven't been um with us along this journey, we have what's called a municipal separate storm sewer system permit um which is what's actually called a TMDL, total maximum daily load from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It's an unfunded federal mandate uh to improve storm water quality. So we had two responsibilities. One is to deal with drainage, which is what everyone thinks about when they think about storm water. And then two is to take the quality of that storm water and improve that. Uh we do that through things like stream restoration, tree planting, putting in place other best management practices. All of those things are very expensive and we can't actually fund it with the total amount of revenue we're bringing in from the stormwater fees. So we're doing a significant investment from the general fund uh out of our general fund taxes to continue that work because it's very important uh as a policy priority for the board of supervisors. Uh, in addition, some park improvements at Simmons Park, Detective Jones Memorial Park, and Twin Oaks Parks. Uh, furthermore, guide rails in Silver Lake, Big Oak, and Banks Road. We're going to patch the foot bridge at Walter Miller Elementary School. Anyone use that foot bridge down there? We met a couple people at the town hall. They use it. It's in really bad shape. So, we're going to be improving that. That's been a deferred project for a number of years. Uh, we're going to increase the amount of line painting and striping, uh, which def definitely needs to get done. Next time when you're driving home tonight, take a look at the lines. You'll see what we're talking about. some school zone improvements across

public schools, including traffic control and speed indicator signs. In addition, pedestrian signal upgrades at eight intersections in New Falls Road and Woodborn Road. Uh we're doing an advanced uh warning system at South Flowers Mill Road Bridge. Uh as we know, I think it just happened last Thursday. Another truck, yet another truck gets stuck under there. Uh we'll be doing a warning system that will hopefully defer some of that. Uh and if they continue down towards the system, they'll actually hit the system and not hit the bridge. uh which will be a actually a better improvement for the township. Uh storm water construction to begin at Hillside Avenue. Uh we're talking about um adding five additional equipment operators to the Department of Public Works to support storm water maintenance operations. Conversation we had earlier was that some of the contracts were putting out to bid. I think the comment was made earlier in reference to ADA ramps. Um sometimes putting project out to bid um makes a lot of sense for sort of private sector expertise, but the cost is not insubstantial. Uh we're looking to sort of insource some of that work. So you heard me say earlier that we're trying to do a lot more storm water drainage work. Uh we think that we can do more work at a lesser cost by using the um capabilities of our public works staff uh which is a department that's remained relatively flat from a staffing perspective over the last many years. So we're looking at five there. Um the board heard a business proposal to this effect during the budget process in October. Uh fire lieutenant to our daytime engine. This will be the person who's in charge of that engine. um and [snorts] sort of the responsibilities of them from both an inspection perspective as well as a response perspective. Uh we are discussing adding a professional engineer to our staff to reduce cost uh of professional engineering in a lot of these projects. Um and to partner um with our public works team in regards to that uh and then of course the volunteer siphon and tax credit programs for the volunteer fire services which the board adopted in its previous action item. So uh furthermore, additional security enhancement is a community park and Pythia crossing park fire protection study to evaluate how much fire apparatus is needed to serve the township. So that's a fire protection

study a little bit different than the strategic plan uh that we've done in the past. It's a little bit more operations minded. Uh funding apparatus for all fire trucks across the volunteer companies that serve the township. Uh and then some software upgrades within the township internally. So all of that you say, okay, well what what are we really doing here? Right? It's a $53 million budget, significant investments in capital uh into the internal. So, what is this really? Well, if you read this book, and many of you, I suspect already have. I think I pressed the button here. Sorry. Um I would say that this year in many respects is sort of getting back to the basics and trying to stay true to the policy priorities of the board of supervisors and to meeting the expectations of the community. I think I have pressed a button on here. Here we go. All right. Good. Sorry about that. Um, and to meeting the expectations of the community. So, it's a lot of public safety, public safety, community, um, community policing, investing in our police department, um, the things that they need, uh, and ensuring that we're sort of doing these what we sometimes call extras, but that are super important to this community, making sure that we have funding for this. Um, these are things that we really need, but in a deficit spending budget, they become difficult to fund. Um, you know, which is why we're sort of focusing on that. Um, furthermore, making sure we're doing the same thing on fire and EMS, which we talked a little bit about as well, ensuring that sort of they have the resources they need to provide the services to this community that we rely upon. Uh, a lot of infrastructure, roads, storm water, township infrastructure that you rely on every day, the things that we don't really think about. Um, at some point, one of our meetings, we had an actual storm sewer pipe here. We have hundreds of miles of that throughout the township that needs to be maintained. Um, it's like 153 road miles. I've forgotten how many ADA ramps. There's 563 of those ADA ramps that are actually out of compliance. At our current replacement rate, I'll be well into my 60s before we actually get to them. So, there's additional um investment that needs to happen there. You heard about the open space parks and wreck master plan

funding some of that as well. Um spaces to gather and play, right? Um you know, what's the difference between like a neighborhood and a community? I think a neighborhood is somewhere where you sleep or as a community is somewhere where you live. These are the things that we maybe sometimes don't think about, but they make the township somewhere that we live, where we play, where we recreate. Maintaining those assets um that are really used a lot more than maybe we realize is super important. Also, uh and then strengthening our internal services uh with sort of additional technology, software. Um one of the things about this $53 million budget that makes me very nervous is the fact that we build it in Excel. Um which means there's a lot of opportunity for error, a lot of challenges there in terms of teams working within that. There's a lot of modern software systems that give us better controls as to what that might look like and improve our process. So, uh, some charts that sort of just talk about what we looking, you know, what we're talking about. We have 130 mi of township own roads. Our current replacement schedule is 1.3 miles per year. Uh, we're proposing to increase that to 6.5 miles per year, which gives us a life cycle replacement rate of 20 years, which is the average expectancy of a road. Um, our current pace for ADA ramps, it'll take us till 2053 to address all the current non-compliant ramps. We need to increase that in order to get to that life cycle at 60 ramps per year. We're not actually achieving that in next year's budget, but we need to make substantial progress. I'm sorry if I'm going through this too quickly. Uh, storm water infrastructure, sort of the same story. Um, we're doing half a mile a year. It'll take us a thousand years to address every storm water pipe in the township. Um, solar pipes last a long time, which is good. Uh, a 100red-year replacement cycle should be the goal. Uh, unless it's a 200-y year replacement cycle. We'd rather get to 10. So, you got to go from 15 to 50. So, the question is, why are we taxing now, right? Like, what's the tax increase needed for now? You know, we've heard a lot of questions about incrementalism. Can we cut certain things? Um, you know, for a number of years, we've been in a structural deficit. We haven't been funding the

government um in a way where we sort of have structural balance. um nor is there a dedicated um funding stream towards capital which presents significant challenges you know as we sort of laid out here uh where will it go the 6.0 know uh mill real estate increases allocated directly to fire protection apparatus EMS parks and wreck uh which uh achieve structural balance within those funds and if you look at the actual breakdown by fund we proposed to reduce the general fund uh tax rate because we didn't want to put too much money into that general fund as we try to achieve structural balance within those funds uh what about the EIT uh that is uh one of the lowest EIT rates in Bucks County and that adjustment uh provides sort of stability within the general fund as well as the capital fund So cost to the average homeowner, the proposed budget reflects an increase of approximately $179 per year in real estate and $323 per year in earned income tax. That's a challenging number that 323 there's a lot of assumptions there. It assumes that everyone in the township is contributing to EIT, which we know is not true. We know we have seniors and people who aren't working who don't pay EIT. So that average was a little bit difficult to come up with. Um it's probably the closest that we could come to. uh why not use reserves to raise other fees instead? Uh we've been doing that for years. Um first things first, we've been spending out of reserves for a long time. Uh you sort of saw me point out the chart earlier where there was a surplus. Uh you know, we can't continue to do that without changes to existing good policy. Uh and furthermore, fees are designed to cover your cost, not make a profit. So we can't say to somebody who is maybe building a home or building a commercial, hey, come in here and pay exorbitant fees because we needed to fund the rest of our government. Uh that is in violation of state law. There are regulations around that. The idea is to have fees that cover your cost, so it's not being subsidized by uh the average taxpayer, which is something we're making progress towards. Uh the storm motor fee, we are not proposing any increases to the very popular storm motor fee. Uh can we balance the budget without a tax increase, not without substantial cost of services, which are well documented

in the many public meetings that we had. So did we reduce any cost? So one thing that governments at local level always get accused of is just saying yes to everything. Um, that's not true. And my department heads here are here to sort of attest to that directly. We cut a million dollars out of our existing operating budget here. Here's a line item. We also cut another million dollars out of proposals from the various departments um for what they were trying to do next year that we did not fund. So, it's $2 million on the whole. So, what if we don't act? Uh, this is sort of what we call any Game of Thrones fan. Anyone here watch Game of Thrones? Nobody. TV show. Uh, the Red Wedding. Anyone know about that? Uh so it's sort of a very dramatic terrible moment within a TV show um where things a lot of people stop watching the show because it was so horrific. Uh this is what cutting the budget would look like in order to fund the budget. Um cutting $3.8 million out of uh Middletown's budget next year without increasing fees to achieve that structural balance. We're looking at layoffs across every department. I [snorts] read a Facebook comment uh I think it was this weekend, maybe today, where someone said, "Okay, all we have to do is lay off 10 cops and we will balance the budget." That's absurd. 10 cops do not cost $3.8 million. Cops are not inexpensive, but they don't cost nearly $4 million. Um we'd be looking at layoffs across every department. um we'd be looking at sort of reducing the things that make Middletown great. Sort of those um nice to haves that aren't the bare minimum required stuff, but the things that sort of um are special to the policy priorities of the board of supervisors and things that I think the township residents expect. [snorts] Uh so this was a presentation that we heard in November. So we said that there was a public inspection period, which there was by law. Uh that concluded this week uh which is why we're here in front of the board of supervisors uh with the advertised budget. I'm sure there are questions by both the board and the community and I am happy to take them. [snorts]

Um well I certainly want to open it up to members of the public to ask questions of us or of Mr. Ratliff. I um I just have a few comments though before we do that. I think the first thing is uh maybe some accountability taking which is to say that um I'm uh almost halfway through my second term on this board. Um, the entire time that I have been here, we have not raised your taxes. And in fact, we haven't raised taxes at all for uh 10 years. Not uh a lot of municipalities can say that. Um, school districts certainly can't say that. The county certainly can't say that. Um, and so I'm proud of the fact that we've been able to go so long without increasing taxes for our residents. However, the reality is that there is a there is a cost to that or a a a price to be paid for that. Um, and this isn't a surprise. It's not a surprise to any of us. Um, for residents who, you know, are are paying attention to what we've done the last few years. I think Eden mentioned the last six years, it has been talked about through our budget processes that we were reaching our breaking point. Um, we managed through various strategies to get by, for lack of a better word. We were borrowing money from our investment account. We were using for what is for all intents and purposes our savings account to fund our government. Um we cut services um in a pretty dramatic way. I mean we're not paving roads like we used to pave roads. We're not doing the things as a community that we used to do. Um we had to deny lots of requests for more staff to do certain projects and we basically just kept things razor thin. I mean, you know, people often ask, you know, why can't we just tighten our belts and cut expenses so we don't have to raise taxes? Well, we've been doing that for several years now. And while we've been able to survive yeartoear,

um the level of service that we've been able to provide to the community has been in in my opinion not up to par with what I think folks are expected to and what folks deserve when you live in a community like Middletown. Um, the other thing that happens is you eventually get to the point where you need to you need to level set. And so I'm I'm I'm kind of referring to this budget cycle as a level set. Um, yeah, we've managed to go a decade without a tax increase. And where that has left us now is having to make a very significant tax increase. And I I know it's significant. Um, I know it's painful. I know residents aren't happy about it. The four of us, we all live here. Um, we pay taxes here, too. this this is not our job. Um we we not this is not our full-time job. We all have day jobs. We all have families. We all have kids. Um we all, you know, live here and we pay taxes here. So, we're raising taxes on oursel. And I said earlier tonight, and I mean it, and I don't think anybody could possibly question this. No resident wants to raise taxes on themselves, and no politician wants to raise taxes. Um so, believe me, we don't we don't go into this process uh lightly. we go in eyes wide open. But the fact of the matter is we have we we made a strategic choice. Um and I'm I said I started this comment by saying it's time to take some accountability and I will take accountability for this that we made a strategic choice not to raise taxes. We could have for the last decade been raising your taxes a little bit every year. We'd be in the same place we are right now in terms of your tax burden or the tax burden that's proposed, but it probably wouldn't have hurt so much because it would have been gradual. And we didn't do that. Um, and again, that was a strategic decision. It was a policy decision. It was a political decision that we made as a board of supervisors. And I've been chair of this board for several years now. And so, um, I certainly, um, take responsibility for that decision. But this is that's what we did, and this is where we are. And

the fact of the matter is we are facing a significant structural deficit. We have a general fund that does not have a dedicated funding source, that is not funded. And in order for us to continue to live in the community that we love and for this community to be what we want it to be, this is a necessary step. Um, I think there is, and I say this with all due respect for the press and not to be unfairly critical of the press, but I think some of the press that is out there and some of the stuff that I've seen going around social media in particular is somewhat misleading about what this tax increase actually is. And I think one of the things that um is most important for everybody to understand, and Mr. Ratliff explained this, but I just think it bears repeating. When people when media says that your real estate taxes are increasing by some percentage, it's not your full real estate tax bill. I I don't know if you can pull that slide up again, but if you saw that slide, 80% of your real estate tax bill is school taxes. It's not township taxes. Township taxes are actually a very small portion of your real estate tax. So when there are news articles that say your your real estate taxes are going to increase by whatever percentage, it's not your full tax bill. It's only the township portion. Now, I can't speak for what the school district is going to do or has done or might do, and I can't speak for what Bucks County has done or might do, but I just want to make that point, that clarifying point that if you take your current tax bill, don't think the entire bill is increasing by some astronomical percentage. Um, and then the other thing that I think bears repeating is this this conversation about the earned income tax. So, um, our earned income tax is half a percent. That's less than most of our neighbors pay. Surrounding communities are already paying a 1% earned income tax. Um, and so we've managed for again a decade to have a lower earned income tax than a lot of our neighbors. By increasing the earned

income tax to a percent, not only we are we bringing ourselves on par with what surrounding communities are doing, but and and follow me if you can with this. The when you live in Middletown but work somewhere else, you're paying earn income tax to where you work. So 40% of our residents are already paying 1% earned income tax. Except that 50% of it is going to the town where they work, not to the town where they live. So if you live in Middletown but you work in say lower Mayfield who has a 1% in earned income tax only that half a percent is coming to us. The other half that you pay what sorry they're the one example that doesn't have it. False.

Lowerfield is the one example that doesn't have [clears throat] uh earn income tax. False township would have it anywhere in Montgomery County. False township. Thank you. Yeah.

Right. So if you work in any of those places uh that other 50% you're paying it already. It's just going somewhere else. So for those people, your income tax is not going to change. You're going to say the pay the same 1% you're already paying, except that other 50% is going to come to the community where you live, not to wherever it is that you work. Um, and so again, that's 40% of residents who are already paying a full percent earned income tax. So for them, that's not going to change. I know this is hard. I know this is um not popular. I know that we're have been taking heat for it and we're going to take heat for it. I get it. I understand it. Um, frankly, it's part of the reason why we haven't done it for 10 years because we know that people don't want it and don't like it and aren't going to be happy about it. And frankly, we're again, we live here, too. We pay taxes. We don't want to pay more taxes. None of us do. But look at that that graphic that that Mr. Ratliff put up a few moments ago. Look at what we are talking about. Look at the consequence that we would be facing if we don't do this. and put yourself in our shoes and ask yourselves what what would you do if you were in this position? If the alternative was laying off 10 police officers, by the way, every one of those police officers, they're supporting a family and a lot of them live in your community, too. They live in your township and live in your neighborhoods. Who wants to be the one to have to decide which 10 police officers are losing their jobs because we can't pay afford to pay more taxes? What about our public works employees? The people that were out there overnight plowing your streets. I listen, I I know people will criticize everything, but I I drive around this county a lot and I and I travel a bit for work. Nobody clears their streets like Middletown Township. Have you been to New Town? Have you been to Northampton? Have you been other places? We're better than all of them because our guys work around the clock and they do an unbelievable job. So, which of those guys are we going to lay off so that we don't have to raise our taxes? Um, you know, there was a mention of something called community policing. So, I I I want you to

understand that what our police do in Middletown, they don't just respond to crimes. It's not just you call 911 and they send a police officer out to arrest somebody who's breaking into your house. Now, if we don't pass this tax increase, that may be where we're headed. But what the the officers in our township do is something called community policing. And that's something that makes us unique and what makes our police department so incredible. And frankly, I don't think anybody would argue we have the best police department in the county, if not farther beyond than that. Community policing means responding to quality of life type complaints. Things that maybe don't rise to the level of criminal activity, but things that make your quality of life less than it should be. And our police officers respond to those types of calls and they deal with those types of calls. Um, they also do a lot of public outreach. They're in our schools. They do prevention work. Um, they do all kinds of community outreach and charitable things. Those are all the things that would disappear if we have to. to number one, cut taxes, and number two, lay off police officers. We'd be taking away their resources to be able to do that. Um, you know, roads and infrastructure is up there. When I first got on this board, we paved a million dollars of roads every single year. Um, we had to cut that down to a half a million. So, that's one of the cuts that I've been talking about. So, we had to make a strategic decision that we don't want to raise taxes, so we're going to have to cut things. So, one of the things we're going to cut is we're not going to pave as many roads as we used to. Well, that directly impacts our lives. I mean, we've got roads that are in desperate need of being repaved that we haven't done. And now we're faced with what frankly is a backlog. So now we didn't pave the roads that needed to be paved last year and now they still need to be paved, but now we've got a whole new cycle of roads that need to be paved. I mean, there are whole neighborhoods that need to get repaved and we keep deferring and deferring and deferring. Again, this is this is what I see as a level setting year. Um I um I'm proud of the fact that we haven't had to raise taxes for 10 years, but this is where it

has left us. And um I am, you know, I am owning the fact that we need to do this now to keep our community what our community is. And so I'm not asking anybody in this room or anybody who's watching online or on YouTube or anybody who may watch this later or read about it in the newspaper or talk about it later. I'm not asking any of you to be happy about it. I'm not asking any of you to be like say I'm glad my taxes are raised. All I'm asking you to do is to to think about it to to to think critically about the decision that we were faced with and to put yourselves in our shoes and ask yourself what you would do in this situation. And to the folks that just say, "Well, just cut more spending or, you know, just take the money from fees or borrow the money from here or or do those things." We've been doing that and I know that. Listen, I I I get it. People are busy. I don't expect people to come to these meetings every month and I don't expect people to read the 4,000page budget budget that you know gets put together every year. I don't expect people to to to pay that close attention. I mean I I get it. We're busy. But if you go back and look and if you were paying attention for the last several years, you would see that we have this conversation every year. This is not this is not a new thing and we have been cutting and we have been borrowing and we have been scrimping in order to avoid doing what we're doing today. But I think that time has passed and we are at sort of a critical juncture where that's no longer a feasible option. So I would just ask you to give us some understanding um give us some critical thinking and put yourselves in our shoes. I mean you know we're we're at the end of the day we're all just residents. I mean, you may have elected us. We may have won an election. Um, and so we get to sit up here and make these decisions, you know, month in and month out, but at the end of the day, we're all just residents um trying to do the best things for the communities where we live and where we're raising our children. Um, just like everybody else here is. So, um, that that's all I'm asking for folks. And but we're here tonight and for those of you that are here or online, we're

willing to take questions. We're willing to hear feedback. Mr. Ratliff is here to answer questions. Mr. Val is here to answer questions. We've got in the back of the room the directors of our various departments. If you want to know why park and wreck costs what it costs or why the police department costs what they cost, they're here to answer questions. Um the last thing I'll say before I turn it over, I want to commend this township team for the tremendous job they have done. This was without question the most difficult budget process I've been through. And the thing that this board really challenged them on from the beginning was this needs to be the most open um and public budget process we have ever done. We need as much opportunity as we can get for public engagement, for public feedback, because the one thing the four of us did not want to do, and a lot of this was about not repeating past mistakes, is we didn't want to sort of sneak this in under cover of darkness and have people surprised and feel like they didn't know what was happening. And I know there are still people that won't know this is happening and they're not going to find out till after it's happened and they're going to say, "Why didn't the township tell anybody?" But I we have tried and our team has tried harder and succeeded better than I ever imagined. Um you know between the public budget workshops, between Facebook live, between the town hall, um and all the just many many opportunities, the behind the budget social media series, if anybody has seen that, I mean our directors have been just like putting this video content out there. We've tried really really hard to get the word out to folks that this was happening, that this decision was coming um so that everybody had an opportunity to be aware and we've been hearing feedback from people. I mean, don't think we haven't been hearing and we've been trying to make adjustments and changes where we can. Um this this tax increase that's contained in this budget, it wasn't done haphazardly. It wasn't done um just because we felt like it was something that we should do. It it was done out of necessity. and we think that the level of the tax increase is something that is out of necessity.

So that's where we are. That's what's on the agenda tonight. Um we are all here to talk about it. Um I'll let my colleagues say anything if they want to and then I want to open it up for folks in the audience or online if they have questions, comments or concerns, just give them an opportunity to come to the microphone. Um anyone?

Yeah, I mean I think you you spoke very well and and you got all our points across what we're all thinking. I mean, we've been kicking it down the can. I mean, kicking the can down the road for the last I mean, before we were on the board, they've been doing it. Um, we've cut everything that we could possibly have cut to make sure that we haven't raised taxes. I'm going to be honest, I kind of wish we could kick it one more year, [laughter] but that's not really real realistic um with what we're being presented with. And we know that we have to make the reasonable responsible choice for our citizens of this, you know, township. Um and we have thought about this long and hard and the the directors have done their best to make cuts um what we've asked them and [clears throat] um this is not easy for us. This is very difficult. I know people think they just are just you know spending spending spending and that couldn't be further from the truth. We have tried everything we can to make cuts, but if you know you haven't had a raise in how many years it's been, 12 years, 10 years, something like that. Um, every year our revenue um, you know, our every year can't get the word. Every year our expenses go up and our revenue hasn't because we're not bringing you more taxes. So, at some point, um, it's just inevitable that we're going to have to do this because we want, uh, you know, we're we're used to a quality of life here in Middletown. And I think that everybody wants roads that are paved and, you know, they don't want to be they want snow removed and they want to be safe. Um, they want to know that the police are going to be there if there is a problem. They want to know that their um, you know, their community is going to be the community that they moved into. So, this is not an easy decision. And this has been a very very difficult budget year for us and um we have not taken anything lightly and we have listened to everything that you have come and said to us and I just want to let you know that um this has been a

very difficult process and we have thought about everything very carefully. Thank you.

Um I just want to concur uh with Mike and with Dawn. I want to thank um the township staff, your directors. Um it was very transparent. This process was very transparent and I think um you did an excellent job of sharing the information. Um and and I it's tough. I I don't want my taxes going up. Um you know, every year our costs go up just like at home. I don't know. I feel squeezed, too. You know, um I work full-time. I'm trying to pay the bills like I'm head of my house and um you know I even have to door dash. We all are like struggling. I don't want to pay it either. But here's why I'm here. I'm committed to this community. I'm committed to serving. And I know that unfortunately if we want to protect what we already have in place and make sure that the services that we have for our citizens continue to be at a level that we expect, then we have to, you know, look at this budget seriously and make some, you know, tough decisions.

Okay. Um, I'm going to open it up now to members of the public. So, we haven't we haven't made a motion or anything or not there's not a vote pending. This is just, you know, open and public comment feedback. So, anybody who wants to talk, please, now is your chance. Uh, [clears throat] Eric Bau 79, sweet gum. Um, breathe. [gasps and snorts] I'm actually going to give you guys a reprieve uh at the beginning. Um, just because I want to echo something uh that you actually said just just now, Mike. Um, I've been doing this for what? I've been coming to meetings for what the last five years. Uh uh budget meetings every year sans this past year for very personal reasons. Um I can remember back in 23 or maybe 22 where I was the only member of the public at a budget meeting. Um, and although I I did miss some uh cuz I [clears throat] was out of state and busy with other things, uh, I do want to commend you guys that that the openness of it, you guys try did try everything to get more people there and my understanding is from what I've heard a lot of people did show up. So, I do want to commend you commend you all for that. Um, I Whoever [clears throat] put this together, what was it? You Eden, did you put this together?

Yeah, it was team. Uh this is a lot easier than the than the binder that I got the last couple of years of you know the 400page uh thing. So I appreciate this. Um I have gone through I have gone through it. Uh it does give the pretty good high level. Um there's you guys are actually correct. Uh, I want the the public here to know, you know, as somebody who does pride himself on being a member of uh, the Middletown community and someone who has gone through and looked at all of our different um, uh, individual um, revenues and our expenses, all our departments. Um, I just want to echo that you guys have have done actually a pretty darn good job at this, even though the flack that you're about to get. uh after me after I'm I'm certain. Um that being said, I think there are some avenues of revenue that we can explore, some alternative avenues that in the 26 to [clears throat] uh in the 26 year to 27 budget. Um I will be advocating for um but uh yeah, so I I do I do want to give you guys a bit of a kudos for it. um it does fund appropriately in my opinion uh the our police and our fire services. Um so yeah, I actually um do commend uh the entire team who did put this together. Um so uh just going to leave you with that and uh good luck guys. Thank you. Anybody else? Good evening. Uh my name is uh Kurt LOL. I live at 760 Atkinson Lane. I want to echo what the gentleman said. Obviously, you've spent a great deal of time putting this together. I have a qu couple of questions that move this off

of the residents and move it more to the business community. I know the business community in this arena is probably north of a thousand businesses that that have their business in Middletown. Um I believe most of those businesses, if not all, pay a um uh business tax. Uh I believe that's the uh uh business um privilege tax if I'm not correct. Um my question is is whether or not that rate is increasing to help offset some of the costs that are going on in this community.

Sure, I'd be happy to speak to that. So, uh Act 511 is the state law that empowers specific types of taxes in the township. So, what you're speaking of, the merkantiel tax is kind of the term that we use here locally, the earned income tax, a lot of the other kind of business type taxes, including the amusement tax. The township is currently at the statutory maximum for all of those taxes um that the business community experiences. Amusement is at the maximum 10% which is split between the township and school district. Merkantil tax is the maximum. The only one where there's any room aside from real estate is the earned income tax.

So that business tax has that been ever changed to your knowledge in recent decades? It's been at the maximum for quite some time and I if I'm not mistaken um and I would turn it solicitor if I'm mistaken on this point. Um I believe that the authority that the township has to change that we're essentially grandfathered with our current tax rates for some of those business specific taxes if I'm not mistaken. Uh so we couldn't even you know increase or decrease. We're essentially stuck with what we have for those. Do you know who in fact has the opportunity to change that? Is that at the state government level? Yes. Yes. So any sort of taxation authority uh is a power granted by the state government.

Okay. Has the board requested from our representative into the state to re look at this tax base that hasn't changed for businesses in this community to see if that could also be revised to reflect the current status of this community and others.

I'm happy to answer that question. Yeah. So that's a good question. So there's two things. So, one, which Mr. Valla is going to review later, uh there's been a change last year at the state legislature that allows us to increase uh real estate taxes specifically for fire. Um and that's only in I forget the exact definition, but essentially it's only Bucks, Monco uh and Delaware County, I think. Um where we can increase our real estate taxes for um fire apparatus. Now, I know you're talking about businesses, but the fact that the state legislature changed that tax law is significant because the state legislator makes very few changes to the municipal codes of which we are governed by. Um, sometimes they go decades without making changes. So, the fact that that happened is a significant sort of enhancement that Middletown um and Bucks County is benefiting from. That's number one. Number two, the entire taxation policy um across all types of municipalities including buroughs, second class, first- class townships is sort of like designed to funnel towards real estate because it's designed to sort of tax at the value of a certain property. Right? So, a warehouse is going to be valued at a much different number than what a residential real estate um uh what a residential dwelling would be valued at. The challenge in Bucks County is that the last time a countywide reassessment happened was 1972, which is the oldest non-reassessment in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So, we're looking at houses that are valued at 789 million and they're being taxed at like $29,000. So, what that means is that we have to have a significantly higher um increase in our real estate taxes in order to bring in the amount of money that our modern-day budgets require, but they're sort of based on this 1972 number. Um, there's nothing the board of supervisors can do about that. That's a decision of the county commissioners. um and I think gets kicked around from time to time, but in the absence of that sort of being dealt with, the municipalities in Box County are going to continue to have sort of significant challenges in sort of bringing revenue from all different types of land uses uh within the municipalities into their budgets. We had a whole meeting around revenue um to discuss a lot of these things, but these are good questions.

One follow-up question. You mentioned the amusement tax again. Is that within the jurisdiction of the township to increase that or is again is that regulated by the state?

So any taxation authority that the township has across the board whether it's real estate or any of these other kind of specific business taxes are all at some point governed by state law. So real estate is governed by the secondass township code or I kind of jokingly refer to it as kind of like the township constitution which spells out a whole list of regulations we have to follow. And then there's also additional state laws. So act 511 which is going back many decades empowers the township to have additional tax levers such as amusement tax, merkantal tax. And so any taxation of authority the township has at some point is all filtered back up to the state level. So, has the board had any conversations with our state representative to

put his put his input into the state to say perhaps it should catch up to where reality is today that homeowners are facing that that's I am I'm looking at how do we push that lever since you guys are handcuffed.

Sure. Absolutely. So, there has been a lot of conversation over the years and I can I can attest to that from prior boards as well prior to the current folks sitting at the deis. Um I know one specific example, so just to foreshadow I believe the next agenda item. Uh one example of that that Middletown has very strongly advocated for for several years is currently um the fire tax specifically there is a legal maximum. So the secondass township code that I was describing specifically says no township can ever tax beyond three mills specifically for the purpose of fire. Middletown has is at that maximum right now. So, we legally cannot tax real estate anymore for the purpose of fire than we currently are. The state law changed in 2024, which was a direct result. It was uh Senator Ferry who is a very strong advocate for that. Um and in order to accomplish that change, so we now have the ability to um once we pass an ordinance which is before the board tonight, uh the township would have the ability to increase the maximum uh taxation capacity for both fire and that also applies to EMS or emergency medical services. So that is one example of some local advocacy that's been

and I know that doesn't necessarily go to your point which is because that's still real estate taxes that residents pay and your point is why can't we get businesses to pay more taxes and exactly that we hear your point loud and clear. I think the answer is we're constantly talking to our state representative, state senator and trying to get them to advocate for us. I think it's difficult. I think it's it's I think it's a challenge at the state legislature to change these sort of very entrenched laws, but the answer is yes. We we we have those conversations regularly. And importantly, real estate applies to all properties in the township. So, businesses and residents, right? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Whoever's next, anybody who's [snorts] Good evening, Blake Haymon again. Sorry to bother you and be a thorn in your sides this evening. You're not. We're happy you're here. Okay. Just a few couple questions. Okay. Now, with real estate transfer tax, does the township get any of those percentages? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Have the incre since the properties were going crazy so to speak back with COVID and since then, have those percentages went up over the last few years and about how much does the township get on that? Sure. That is a fantastic question. So that's probably one of the most fascinating if you look at all of the different tax categories we have individually that's probably had the most fascinating trend. So what you've seen if you kind of just take a step back of what what has happened with real estate. So that's really what drives what happens with our revenue there. We get I believe it's a half percent and I believe we share uh there's another half percent that goes to the school district uh of that revenue source. So in 2021 2022 when kind of the commercial real estate market was you know at kind of its peak right before you know kind of the post-pandemic cliff uh there are a couple of large transfers like apartment complexes um in 2021 and 2022. So if you look at those two years the township was at like an all-time high. Uh the typical year for us is I would say about 1.3 to 1.6 6 million of revenue from that source because the commercial real estate market and this is not just Middletown, this is nationwide because the commercial real estate market has really cooled off a bit. What has sustained us is the residential um transfers. And so what you're seeing is the value of residential transfers is higher than it used to be and it's pretty robust. It's not, you know, constant turnover like it was a couple years ago with housing, but it's still strong. And so what you're seeing is the level of revenue that the township sees at the bottom line is about what it's always been. Um but you're what you're seeing is a robust residential real estate market holding strong and offsetting a weak commercial market.

Okay. So the real estate transfer tax is 2%. I I stand correct. I believe it's a 1% total that the township gets half and the school district gets half if I'm not mistaken. Okay. I thought it was 2%. Could be wrong on that. So the so the other one would I'll just jump in here real quick. It is 2% total. 1% goes directly to the state and then the other% 1% goes to the state 1% goes directly to the state and the other 1% gets split between Okay. Thank you. Uh a couple other questions. Um what about weren't we supposed to get a reduction on our property taxes when the casinos came into play? [snorts]

So yeah. So what there there has not been a reduction on property taxes as a result of the casinos. You're talking about the casino in Ben Salem. Yes. Because No, I get the farmstead exemption on that for like $2, $300 or something. Yeah, there's a homestead uh the homestead that reduction that comes directly off the top of your your uh school district bill. I believe it is.

Okay. But I was always under the impression it was supposed to be a a bigger tax cut because of that. Uh now also um liquid foot fuels, you're talking about cutting road paving, doesn't you know the liquid fuels taxes, how much is going on with that? Are we getting a cut on that or you're talking about cutting paving of streets? But we all know where liquids fuels comes from every time we go to the gas pump.

Sure. So another great question. So the liquid fuels um revenue that we receive. So this is a portion of the gas tax that anybody who drives a vehicle or the alternative fuels pay a piece of it to. Uh that revenue the township houses in a standalone fund. Uh in years past um the township has used that for a variety of services including just public works. Um any eligible expenses. So there's limitations on what we can use that for. Um as well as for road paving. This year we used a portion of it for road paving and a portion of it for public works staff specific to road maintenance. We document their time that way. What we're planning to do at least in 2026 is there's a small reserve in that fund. So, we're planning to invest $2 million in road paving for next year. Um, annually we receive, I believe it's about 1.2 $1.3 million. And there is a whole formula out there based upon the number of miles of township roads and how that is dispersed and it's offset based upon or calculated based upon the amount of actual tax revenue that the state who collects that tax receives.

Okay. that has been essentially flat. Um the rate has incrementally gone up a little bit, but as vehicles become more fuel efficient and consume less gas, there's essentially less tax being paid in that way. So what we've seen is about flat. Understandable. Uh okay. Um one other thing we were talking about emergency services earlier. Now, is there any provision? I know you were talking about um like something for Is the township going to have a dedicated fire truck just for the emergency crews in the township, or will they like rotate between the different companies, so to speak?

So, the township currently has a uh 12-hour engine crew Monday through Friday daylight, so 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Um they uh are housed out of the Pendal Fire Company, and the reason for that is Pendell Fire Company is strategically located. So, uh, the National Fire Protection Act sort of sets a standard for how many firefighters need to be on an emergency scene within a certain amount of minutes, and they sort of target 9 minutes. Uh, so you'll hear sort of fire chiefs and admin like myself talk about a 9-minute heat map. U Pendelle has a pretty good 9-minute heat map for the entirety of the region that we serve. Uh, in Middletown, Northern Middletown becomes a challenge, but we have mutual aid um with Yardley Mayfield as well as New Town that sort of uh deals with that. Um, the reality is our fire engine, our daytime crew are all fire inspectors. So, they sort of meet at 6 a.m., gather for the day with the reports they have, uh, as as businesses and residences start to open up, they run and do inspections all day. So, they're not really responding out of Pendle except for sort of the in between periods. They're responding from wherever they're doing inspections within the township.

Okay, I understand. I totally understand that. What I was getting at is they're going to be like a I would say like an escrow fund or a fund because firet trucks are probably better part of a million dollars today. And what it is is it's about a three-year wait if you if they were to order one from the factory. Yeah, we have three engines on um order now. They were ordered a year ago, will take delivery in the first quarter of 27. So, we're very familiar with that. Um special service trucks like aerials and rescues are even longer. I think a tiller is 48 months right now. Um, so we agree we do have an apparatus fund that is fully funded um by this budget that deals with an apparatus plan to replace all the fire trucks uh that Middletown Township needs across the four volunteer companies and the career engine.

Okay. Now I got a qu question regarding that. Uh you got the four trucks on order. Correct. Three. Three correct. Okay. I understand. Three. Now are you set into a certain price with that vendor or is that price going to increase when they come in for delivery? Yeah, that was that was negotiated and previously agreed to. The township's under contract for this. So they're under under contract for that price. They're not they go on the line to be built this summer. So they're not going to be paying an increase in it. Correct. Like when they take delivery unless we make changes or something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Appreciate the questions. Hey, I'm Bill Kennedy 575 Langorn New Town Road.

Hi. Uh so in 2025, how much with all the new building has the township gained in real estate taxes? What is the extra that came into the township?

Sure, I'd be happy to speak to that. So, uh in 2025 or essentially about a year ago to now, the township has actually seen a small reduction in total. So, um I had a nice video that was on our social media account where I talked about this exact question. Uh so folks have certainly experienced a lot of development or they've seen new construction or redevelopment of taking something old and putting something new there. Uh what is not talked about or not really seen is that there's a lot of assessment appeals. So there's uh primarily businesses but any property owner has the right to go to the county board of assessment um appeals and basically petition to reduce their assessed value or reduce their taxable value. Uh, so in the video that I shared, uh, I spoke specifically about the, uh, Lowe's home improvement over on Business Route 1, uh, which just earlier this year, I believe we issued a couple hundred,000 refund, which is over the last couple, uh, of years, they've were able to be granted a reduction in their taxable value of their property. that is happening in a lot of uh cases in in Middletown Township. Simon Properties at the mall uh going back to like 2009 to today, the taxable value of their property is 78% less today than it was in 2009. And that translates to several million dollars, especially when you're looking at township, school district, and the county. So essentially to answer your question, there has been a slight increase in real estate revenue received from new development, but unfortunately that is being offset and we're still in a deficit in that where it's about.7% over the last 15 to 18 years. There's actually more reductions in assessment or reductions in taxable value happening than the new building is creating if that makes sense.

So the new housing market is still offset by a bad uh business.

Correct. And then just importantly, a new business or new construction doesn't actually hit the tax base until a certificate of occupancy is issued. So, one example that we've heard a lot of talk about is the new warehouses on 213. Those have they're close, but they have not yet actually officially hit the tax base. Same with residential properties until it's um issued a certificate of occupancy and especially in those cases transferred, it's not actually realized in the tax base. So, we do we know that there's some additional uh stuff that's been approved that has not actually yet been built and occupied that is going to be coming in the next couple of years. But as far as what we're experiencing today, the uh increase in assessment appeals is not keep is outpacing the uh additional taxable value of new development.

And when you're saying it's being reassessed is being reassessed by the county or the state. So there county level. So there's two different things. So there's reassessment of like the whole whole county. That's not what we're talking about. This is an assessment appeal. So you actually there's a legal process at the county level where you can petition to reduce your taxable value. Basically saying especially a commercial property I'm not uh the tax burden that I have because of X Y andZ reason uh should be less because I you know whatever the argument is but there is a county level process involved for that. So the new buildings wouldn't be would be assessed at a higher rate than like the lows that you're saying on to uh Route One.

Sure. So, and I'll happily talk about this for as long as So, feel free to shut me up. Uh so, because the county has not reassessed property since the 1970s, some of the slides that we talked about, the average assessed value for a home in Middletown is in like the $29,000 range. Um and obviously, there's no home that's been sold for that in this township for probably many years. Um there is a calculation that happens that the state determines each year uh that essentially divides the market value into to basically kind of artificially create this taxable value. So that way a new home that's being built today doesn't have a taxable value of you know $700,000 like the market price is. It basically it takes the market value and divides it by this kind of state. It's called the common level ratio. It's about 17, which means our uh assessed values are about 17 times lower than your market values. So that $29,000 figure we're talking about, if you multiply that by 17, you get somewhere around like $500,000, which is probably about the average home value in Middletown across, you know, bottom to top. [clears throat]

And it's one of the dumbest things. It is very convoluted. Yeah. So, I guess in the beginning question, at the end of the day, all the development that we're doing, we're barely making extra money off of it because of how bad the businesses are hurting us.

I wouldn't say it's because of how bad the businesses are hurting us. I would say it's how tax legislation is being applied to Bucks County and therefore Middletown. Um, it really goes back to sort of the reassessment and the assessment appeals process, all of which is out of the control of the board of supervisors. That's one. And then two, what we're not talking about, you're just talking about building in and revenue in. What we're not talking about is the resources that they need. So when we build homes, apartments, commercials, they call 911, right? They need police services, they need utilities, they need roads, they drive on existing roads. And so there's the expense side of what they come with them, too. And so there's a whole theory um and study that you know we're not involved in but that sort of happens in this industry of well how much tax revenue do you really need against what kind of development in order to offset those expenses and how does that really work right the cheapest real estate that the township has is open space right I mean that doesn't use services right even though you're not getting revenue from it so that's sort of the broader question

but these developments ain't costing us money at the end of the year right they're producing money for us We're we're saying that it's essentially a 7% loss. So we're building homes and we're losing money. We are not building homes. The private sector the township's letting houses get built. That's costing the township more money. It's much more complicated than that, right? So there's individuals to just go to I'm very stupid. No, you're not stupid. I'm sure you're not stupid. These are just

complicated issues. So um you know, individual property owners have property rights, right? I mean, if people to a certain degree of latitude can do the things that they want to do within their property, the way to sort of regulate that is like the uh zoning code that the township has, the subdivision land development ordinance that the township has to set a direction to private industry with our comprehensive plan. Um, when we have developers, property owners, they come in, they want to do certain things with their properties. The board of supervisors isn't saying, "Yes, I want that or no, I don't." They're exercising oversight authority within the limitations of those codes. Right? So, we always sort of teach new elected officials, you can't zone for a Wegman's and not a Trader Joe's. You can zone for a grocery store, and it's really not even a grocery store. It's more like a commercial unit that does retail, but you can't control what happens there. When when they come and make applications, you're providing oversight and essentially saying, "Have you complied with all of the necessary codes um that are already in place." We saw it earlier today uh when Mr. Murphy was giving presentation um about the land development plan um to the property earlier, right? They weren't saying whether they liked it or not. they were saying yes we believe that this has met all of our our regulations which staff did a comprehensive review as did our um engineer Mr. Kesler and then yeah listening to waiverss that were relevant to it.

And just to embellish the other side of the question a little bit what we're talking about is the you know slight reduction in taxable value in the whole tax base. We're talking about the entire township every single residential and commercial property all wrapped into one big number within a single development. Yes, there is certainly an increase. to like Stone Farm, which was current, you know, was farmland before and is being built into homes by from point A to point B once those are all built. Yeah, that single property has a significantly higher taxable value than it used to have, right? But if you're looking at the entire township is what we're talking about when we're building a townshipwide budget, what we are talking about is our lived experience here in this township is there is a small reduction, which we know is the increases we're seeing from new development, is slightly being outpaced by those assessment appeals that are bringing that number back down. So to just really confuse you some more. So if there was no new development within the township and the assessment process by the existing development was still happening, we the township's budget would be taking an even greater loss, which would make the deficit we have even worse.

That's exactly the point I was going to make. So we we almost need some new development to help us at least try to offset to some degree what we're losing from tax reassessments. If we didn't have any new development and we're just facing these tax appeals, which which we have no control over over property owner bring in those appeals, we have no control over whether the county grants them. Um, we would have a significant loss that we wouldn't have any way to offset. So, so one of the things that the board of supervisors talked about in this development process is sort of managing that, making sure they don't go too far one way or the other by, you know, you don't want to get into a situation where you approve all development, right? you can really ruin a community that way, but you don't necessarily want to go the other way and say we're not going to approve any development because it has financial implications to the people that are already here. So, under their leadership in this budget proposal, um depending on how it plays out tonight, it funds a process to review uh the zoning code, which would be probably like an 18month process at least, Miss Renis, uh as well as the subdivision land development ordinance. Those are the boards of supervisors and the planning commission and the residents oversight process to sort of say, okay, if we're going to have development in this community, what kind do we want? Where do we want it? How much of it do we want? You know, what are the sort of provisions within certain zones we want? So, we talk a lot about like continuous open space, different, you know, amenities from a parks perspective. All of those things can get litigated before there's an application for land development so that the community can sort of be designed in the future the way that uh the residents of the board want it to be.

Okay. Very comp it's it's complicated stuff. I'd be happy to talk with you about it offline. I mean, we're very about this kind of stuff. So, if you want to like have coffee with us and we could talk at your off for hours. He's thinking there's no way I want that. [laughter] I appreciate the feedback. We appreciate you coming. I I think if I can cuz I we've gotten a lot of questions about this. People we hear this all the time and people say, "I don't understand. There's all this building going on. Why isn't that generating enough revenue that we don't have to to to raise taxes?" And I think that's the response. It's not generating the kind of revenue people think it is. And when you balance it against the tax appeal reassessments, it's actually a net loss and you can't see an an assessment appeal. You have no idea it happens.

So I guess one more comment to that. Then if the businesses can get tax reductions, what does the homeowner have to do to get tax reductions? We'd be happy to point you at my business cards in the back. Um we can show you the website on Bucks County. Um I think it's buckscount.org probably. They have a tax like the tax board has a website. You can do it. You don't need an attorney to do it. Anyone can do it. Businesses do it because they've got lawyers on staff and they can just pay them to do this every few years. I mean, we Simon, you know, just hit us with another big one. I mean, it's easy if you're a company for a private citizen to go through that process. I mean, you need a lawyer and it's complicated, but our team will point you in the right direction. You can definitely do it. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate you being here,

Mr. So, I guess I'm confused. So the cost of goods go up that we have to pay higher for and they get the tax decrease to line their pockets more. Yes. You know what I mean? How how does that work? I I You're asking the wrong guy. I don't I don't have any control over I mean if I had Lowe's money, I'd burn mine in at this point. You're asking the wrong guy. I have no control.

Maybe he can answer this one for me. and and and nothing against senior citizens because hopefully I get there in a couple of years. Why are we letting the 55 and over communities come here or whatever if they're not paying an earned income tax? Why don't we Hotly debated topic, right? Yeah. I mean, we we debate that topic a lot. I mean, we we've gone back and forth a number of times. Interestingly, one of the things that we often hear is 55 and older communities also don't have school children. So, you're not contributing more school children, which creates a problem for the school district because the schools are crowded. They don't have busing. Um, and so there's there's points and counterpoints to that argument.

And to be fair, a lot of people are 55 are still working. No, and I get that.

But but the biggest answer to your question is that what we hear from developers day in and day out is that's the biggest need in the housing community right now. I mean what what they are what what the the biggest single most marketable property is an over 55 town home or community. Now the good thing we think for the over 55 communities is what they do is that takes somebody who's retired and maybe has raised their family and their kids have moved on and their kids are older and they're leaving their single family home and going to one of these communities which is opening up um housing stock for families that want to move into Middletown. So if you have somebody who's living in middle town or living in let's say you know live a town in a house where they raised their family and their kids are gone and they don't need a house with a yard in a neighborhood anymore and they want to move to one of these communities where they don't have to cut the grass and don't have to shovel their snow. Well now they're opening up that property in Levittown that another family can move into. So there's there's a there's a downstream benefit to families when you build over 55.

I get that. But I mean you hopefully by the time retirement comes you would own your house in Levittown or whatever. Why would you want to go buy something? Because you can sell it for way more than you bought it for, you know, 30 years ago and then you can buy a luxury, you know, town home with all the amenities and a clubhouse and a pickup ball court and whatever. I don't know. And some people want to give transfer tax to the township. So, here's another question. We're we're we're talking about this Flowers Mill Bridge and we're [snorts] going to put up some ugly chain hanging. Well, it hasn't been designed yet. We don't know. You know as well as I do. It's going to look like manure.

I'm hoping it's going to look very attractive. I hope we drive by and go. That's a very luckily I've been on the right side of of Middletown Township [snorts] police officers instead of the wrong side. But you get a speeding ticket. Your speeding ticket is $25. Your EMS fees and your other fees and everything like that which you know are deserved are a lot higher. So why aren't we charging a ridiculous amount of fees? We don't set speeding ticket fees. That's set by the state. The drivers of these trucks when they run into we don't have authority over that. The state legislature would have to change that

even though it so okay well you know what can't we charge them some kind of repair fee to the bridge or damaging the bridge at some point? I I I think just think about the slippery slope of that that what every time anybody requires a police response, they're going to get build for it. I mean, it's like going back to the I'm not saying everybody, but in a in a situation like that where you have a commercial driver that should know better to go down that road with small towns.

Yeah. Small towns in Pennsylvania debate this a lot because their budgets are much more challenged and they're looking for ways to increase revenue to it and so they quickly want to start like charging fees to anyone who does something in their community whether it's right or wrong that they just don't want them to do. Um the reality is the state legislature has had a long history of sort of trying to protect you know visitors, travelers, residents of the commonwealth um from being sort of charged these fees to supplement municipal budgets, right? I mean they essentially if you look at the secondass township code and the tax enabling legislation we have it's inherently designed where the overwhelming majority of the revenue that funds local government are the people who live within the local government and have voting power within it. Like they don't want you charging a bunch of other people to fund your budget. Like it's whether we agree with it or not, that's that's the way the state law is set up.

But but listen to me. I'm being charged for the police officers to sit there and block traffic and direct traffic and everything like that. So why shouldn't why should [clears throat] I pay for their stupidity? I think the inherent reason we have a police department is to provide emergency services and proactive community policing to the residents that are here and sort of a supplemental role that they have is dealing with sort of v visitors, pedestrians um you know and travelers through the township, right? Like I think it would be a hindrance to township residents if a truck ran into the South Flowers Mill Bridge and that police just didn't respond because residents need to get both ways, right? But you're but we're we're protecting stupidity at that point. You know what I mean? I

I think I I mean we could certainly go round and round. I think the answer to the question is we don't have the authority to assess the fee that you're wanting us to assess in this scenario. Gotcha. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

Hi. Uh my name is Stephanie. I live at 16 Queen Anne Road. Um, so I'm one of the people that's getting double hit. So I've worked in Middletown Township for over 20 years and I've lived here for the last two and a half in which I've watched my mortgage with escrow cuz that's what's required when you buy a house for the first so many years. Um, increase by $250 a month. This is going to take it up again. Um, some of that's school tax, some of that's county tax, but now I'm getting employment tax and additional increase in my real estate tax. So, again, it's going to go up. Um, protecting public services, absolutely support that. Uh, my question is, what's going to be done so this doesn't happen every year to the people who live here?

It's a great question. So, as I said earlier on, I think this year is what, you know, at least I'm calling a level setting year. And the reason why the tax increase is so substantial now is because we took great pains to not raise taxes for essentially a decade. Um, and we, you know, we we borrowed and we cut and we did everything we could do to avoid raising taxes and now we're facing a significant deficit and we've been through that. Um, I think what we believe and are hopeful about is that rather than taking a band-aid approach and doing a more modest tax increase this year, this tax increase will fully fund our budget. Um, and I'm not saying to you we're never going to raise taxes again, but our hope is that if there are tax increases moving forward, they'll be a lot more they'll be a lot smaller, they'll be a lot more modest, they'll be a lot more manageable. Um, I mean, I I'm not going to be here forever, so I can't promise what the board of supervisors is going to do and definitely into the future, but I think that is at least the mentality of this board moving forward that, you know, we don't want to have to do this to residents um at least in the near future. Again,

are there things in place that you're looking to for additional revenue streams to prevent a 2027 increase?

Yeah, so my big focus um as a manager for the township is trying to figure out ways that we can reduce our cost, right? So you heard us talk a lot tonight about how we sub a lot of projects out um a lot of our capital projects out that has sort of a private sector price tag associated with it. So sort of piloting that with storm water um we also did an analysis about whether or not we should do ADA ramps internally and whether there was savings there. Um you know potentially adding a PE to staff might you know uh reduce some costs also. So sort of all of those business cases are sort of on the table. Um there's some insurance things that we might be able to do. Um, you know, we're in some pretty good insurance programs, but I think there might be some ways we can tighten the belt there. Uh, that's on the list. And probably the biggest one is staff efficiency. Um, you know, there's a considerable lack of technology investment um into the township, which means that we sort of need more human resources in order to get certain things done. The budget's like a great example that we talked about in real time. Uh, sort of figuring out what the efficiency gains look like that can sort of um, you know, increase the capabilities of our team without increasing the size of our team. and then potentially looking at, you know, as this team sort of changes in complexity over time, what, you know, options might exist there. So, those are probably the three really big ones we have.

And I think to answer your question, there there really aren't other revenue streams other than the ones we have. Um, I wish there were. So, what we're, again, to Mr. R's point, what we're really focused on is controlling expenses so that, you know, after this year, if this budget passes, we will we will have a balanced budget. And while we certainly acknowledge and and anticipate that expenses will continue to increase because that happens, right? I keep I use this analogy all the time. Like your township government is just like your household finances, right? Imagine if you went 10 years never getting a raise except like every year the cost of milk and eggs is more than it was the year before. Like that's kind of our life. We've been draining our savings account and you know not taking the family vacation this year because we're trying not to, you know, we're trying to make do without any more income. Well, so our hope is that we're getting a big raise this year and that is balancing our budget and so that even though there will be maybe increases as we go along and expenditures, we can weather them a little bit better and if we can can reduce expenses in the ways that we're talking about, maybe there won't be further tax increases, but if they were, they'll be a lot smaller. So, I know this is hard and I apologize. I wish we didn't have to do this. I wish there was another way. I mean, I think Supervisor Hannah sort of spoke from the heart that, you know, this is challenging for all of us. Um, so I and I so I'm sorry personally and I wish you weren't in the situation.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Hi. Welcome back. Glad you stayed waiting for me. Um, my name is Joanne Msley. I live at 184 Lower Orchard Drive. And um, I just wanted to ask, you were the one talking about flower smell, right? Okay. Um, I'm not talking about imposing a fee, but don't truckers have insurance, trucking companies, don't they have insurance? Yeah. When we can

on their vehicles and like basically they're damaging a bridge, which is kind of like another vehicle. So, why couldn't the insurance pay for that repair? So the bridge itself is not a township asset. So the it's a ra in this case it's a railroad bridge. Sorry. That's okay. Um unfortunately um unless it is a township asset. So if somebody hits like a traffic signal pole that is a township asset, there are avenues through insurance and restitution that we can recoup some of those money. Generally sort of uh anything associated with township services we provide. So the police response, the fire response, uh any of those sort of, you know, human assets that we needed to deploy to respond to any kind of emergency like that. Unfortunately, you know, that's part of just providing the service. There is not a specific, you know, fee or way that we can recoup those costs.

And the advanced warning system that Mr. Fitch is not super excited about, uh, is being funded by a budget appropriation from the state legislature. So that's not actually hitting the township budget. I think we'll have some design cost, but overall it's funded by the state government. Okay. So, um, so if it is not a township asset, is the township paying to fix it when it gets broken? No.

No. Just the response. So, the police that have to go out, um, you know, that's eating into the time that they could be responding to other calls, but the actual cost or physical damage to the bridge, it is in this case a SEPTA and CSX bridge. And so, any sort of repairs that they incur to the actual structure is on them. So that's what our state taxes go to

uh in a roundabout way. Sure. But what we're talking about is because using this specific example, because that bridge is hit so often, the demand on our emergency resources is pretty significant. And so the goal of this project of doing an advanced warning system is try to cut down on the number of strikes or in this case near misses uh to try to eliminate or reduce the impact in emergency services. Okay. And you were talking about a sign and you were talking about it being ugly. And is there a way like not putting the sign so far down like once you pass the motorcycle place, you're kind of done?

Yeah, we have traffic engineers that are advising us on sort of the best location of the advanced warning system. There's different types of advanced warning systems out there. So, those details are still getting worked out. Okay. Okay. It was just just a thought, that's all. No, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. Any other public comment? One quick question. Sure. You you mentioned about um this the big buildings on toll property not paying taxes. Are they not paying real estate taxes? What kind of taxes are they not paying?

Sure. So, I was specifically referring to real estate tax. So, they have if they have not yet been issued a certificate of occupancy, they have their assessment has not officially triggered or hit the tax base. Um, as far as their impact on other taxes, depending on what type of business occupies them, they may or may not be subject to, you know, the merkantail tax or amusement like we talked about for other sources. And then as far as like earned income tax, that depends on primarily where the workers of those facilities live. Uh, so if they live in the city of Philadelphia, you don't forget about it because the city wage tax preempts anything local. Um, and only if they live in Middletown, then it would it hit us first because as we talked about earlier, pretty much every other municipality in the area has a higher EIT than Middletown currently does. And so very likely if they live anywhere else, they're never going to be paying Middle Town that EIT. So when they come to either the board of supervisors or the planning commission or whatever, they can't just say that I'm I'm building a 10,000 foot box, 100,000 foot box. They have to say, "Hey, this is being designed or set up for something and they're going to build it to those specs." So when everything's all said and done and they have the bathrooms in there and everything like that, just because there's not an occupant in there, why is that our fault? That's their fault for not having somebody on the hook or

we haven't issued a certificate of occupancy yet. We have not issued a certificate of occupancy yet. The certificate of occupancy is administered by the code uh by our code inspectors that basically says, "Hey, you're complete with this project. Everything is done." So I mean, they don't have their bathrooms in there. They don't have their sprinkler system that stuff like that. I mean, yeah, it's things like that. I forget every everybody thinks they're done because they look done from the outside, but they're not. So, until that co is issued

and that's different from a tenant fit out or so, which is typically in a permitting process. So, when somebody comes in and says, "Hey, this used to be X and I would put Y there." That never goes through a hearing in front of this body. That's something that's handled administratively through a permit process. So, depending on what type of business goes in, uh, there is a tenant fit out. So that's separate from what we're talking about as a certificate of occupancy. But once the CO is issued, they'll pay taxes whether they get a tenant in there or not. But are they being paid taxes from when it's approved or from back from square one?

So to be super clear, they're paying taxes on the property now, but it's on the existing assessed value of the property before these improvements. Once the CO is administered, that triggers the assessment process of the new improvements of the property. So it be I think to answer your question, it'll be based on today. But I guess I'm confused like why wouldn't a certificate of occupancy be given for what it was approved for and then if they want to say okay well you know this trucking company's not coming in here we're we're making it into a bouncy house

it will be it will has no control over this number one and number two let's think about it in the context of like a drive-through um fast food place right so if they said okay you know they got permission to build the project's been approved preliminary final they've applied after their building permits, they were approved and they start construction in January. Well, if it takes them 9 months to complete that project and they finally get their CO on September 30, if the law said, "Okay, well, now we're going to tax you back to January 1st." The business argument would be, "Well, wait a second. I was going through this entire building process. I didn't have the chance to be making revenue on this property. You're now charging me for 9 months of sort of the property laying dormant while I made the improvements necessary to bring the revenue in to pay for this new tax liability." Like, that would be the other side's argument, which is likely why the law is written the way that it is. But I I mean I don't know. I just feel that that's silly. I mean I I can I go out and buy a piece of property and build a house on it and you know okay well I don't have the the the toilet hooked up so now I can't get my certificate certificate of occupancy and I'm I'm only for real estate

types of codes we're talking about are a little bit more complicated than the toilet. But I I understand your argument. I think there's a place for it in the context of the conversation but it's not really something we have authority over. And I think probably just the the chorus that you're hearing across all of the conversation that we're having because I appreciate the dialogue about all of the various tax types that we have is that the township's requirement or role in that process is simply to administer the various tax levers that we have at our disposal. It's not to create new ones necessarily. A lot of the authority that we have like we said happens at the state level and so we essentially have to operate within the limitations that is given to I mean, I get you that it falls under the state umbrella, but long and short of it, it's our township. So, you know what I mean? Like, so that confuses.

The township is an independent government that is free to operate within the very tightly worded, super prescriptive legislation administered by the state that is very infrequently updated. Like, it's a commonwealth. So, like the argument of like the origination of the Commonwealth is that there should be the most power at the local level. But the reality is it's the exact opposite. We're low man on the totem pole. Well, I mean, not really. It's the the homeowners and the ones paying the tax. That's us, too.

Good evening, board. Uh, Lance Cers 98 Queen Lily. Um, first couple clarification questions. Um, currently our EIT brings in about 9.6 million. um projected this year with the increase in EIT to 1% is 16 but it doesn't double the 9.6. So I wanted to ask why it's not doubling to like 19

there. So it's a conservative number. It's not super conservative but it's a little conservative. um our EIT collector uh thinks there's going to be a significant lag from the businesses sort of figuring out that they either a need to increase it to 1% for Middletown Township residents who are only paying half a percent or capturing that additional revenue uh from residents who are paying to businesses at 1% with half of it going somewhere else. Um if you look at our I think there should be a projection um chart within that within our budget book uh in front of you there that shows it doubling in 2027 from 9 to 18. Correct. So why would there be a lag? Is it because of it's the businesses and the residents catching up with the change in the law?

We just we just announced this or advertised it last month at the November meeting. If it was advertised sooner, would there be a lag? No, there would not be a lag because it's not the update to the residents paying it and the businesses collecting it isn't going to happen up and until if the board approves it. So that's why that process, right? So, what I'm saying is if we advertised this in August um so that businesses had the opportunity to and then it it didn't take effect till January, would we be collecting the 19 million? Probably.

Um maybe. I mean, that would require the board to adopt a budget in October and frankly the township doesn't have enough financial data from the existing year to sort of professionally build the budget for the next year. So, that would have other consequences. But to your specific question, maybe

I I don't I think the I think the better point is I don't think there are many if any businesses who are going to start that process unless and until a tax increase is actually passed because if we don't pass this budget tonight then there is no tax increase and then they would have done all that effort and calculation for nothing. And I think we're just trying to be budgeting in a conservative fashion. So we're predicting that our take is going to be somewhat less than double at least in the first year because it is a reset year. Maybe it'll be more than that. We don't know, but we're just trying to we always try to budget conservatively.

And that number didn't come out of thin air. We consult Keystone Collections, who is the county appointed administrator of the earned income tax in Bucks County. And that was when we approached them and said effective January 1st. What do you expect the 2026 income to be? It was a low $6 million additional. So that's where you arrive at that kind of $16 million figure in the budget. And I figured that my and and my point is is look, you know, I went to the the budget workshop um meeting, you know, last week or two weeks ago. Um all of these issues that we've had with our budget and you went through it a little bit, we knew we were raising taxes this year. Okay. um getting to it earlier. If we know we're going to raise taxes and we want to get the most amount, I just think it makes sense to advertise it early, get it passed early, um as we're working on a budget so that when it's implemented in January that we don't have the issue of collecting less, right? Um because I don't really have an issue with the earned income tax because of that is that are the people that are working in our township. if it's not our seniors, okay? Cuz I don't want to be 65 years old looking at a property tax bill that I can probably pay, but maybe my neighbor can't, you know. Um so then when I look at um this budget doesn't just increase taxes a ton, but we are increasing spending astronomically as well. Okay. Um and I would go to our stormwater fee. You can call it a fee. It's an additional tax in my mind. You guys are asking for money. People are paying it. Okay. Um the way that was presented is that was going to be its own fund and you know we could you know it would help out the um budget in regards to being able to get to the projects that um we couldn't get to and then we get to the budget this year and

the estimated 1.6 or 1.7 million towards stormwater projects. Um that's not what the budget says. We're paying like 2.8 million. So now we're not only paying what we have in the stormwater fee, but we're paying an additional over a million dollars towards storm water projects. And I go, "Is that really, and I understand these projects are needed, and I want them to get done." I said, "Does it all have to get done at one time, right? Is it are we that bad that we have to raise the property tax?" Because each mill is what about $500,000? One mill 500,000. Are there cuts that can be made that we don't have to raise this property tax? The ADA curb ramps, correct me if I'm wrong, the law doesn't say we have to replace them at a certain specific time, but when we touch that street, when we touch that sidewalk, that's when we have to replace it, right?

Yeah. But we also have to maintain the ones that we've already replaced that are deficient. So, right. And that's where most of that funding is going. So, we have went from And I do want to get back to the storm water question you asked. Okay. Um, just bring it back. So, and go ahead and get to the storm water and I'll go on to the curb ramps. Go ahead.

Yeah, I I think your point is well taken. Um, I think I might have addressed it in the presentation. The storm water fee doesn't bring in enough funding necessary to address all of the storm water drainage and the MS4, municipal separate storm sewer system projects. Um, I think one of the challenges with the storm water fee budget that was presented when the fee was enacted is that it was looking towards future drainage projects, which is super important, but it wasn't necessarily looking robustly at maintaining the existing infrastructure. I think we did a video in our behind the budget series uh where we um looked at um the different boxes that we have, the inlet boxes that are collapsing across this township. If you go out uh around your house and take a look around and look down at some of these boxes, they're literally collapsing, which is creating flooding. uh in a lot of our local roads um and in our waterways. That's a problem, right? And so we're sort of trying to figure out, well, how much money do we need in order to address all these collapsing boxes? What do we need in order to sort of do the um you know, the shop backing out of the existing um inlet pipes we have? I mean, these are sort of the challenges. So, I agree with you and just want to acknowledge that there is an additional investment. It's a policy priority of the board of supervisors. I think we can sort of debate about how much um additional funding is necessary. I think there was a lot of debate about that um in the capital budget planning process. Um but yeah, there is a a supplement from the general fund into the stormwater fund which is a separate fund that also has a fee to sort of address those three key areas MS4, drainage and then maintenance.

And just to embellish on that one additional detail is the expense within storm water also incorporates revenues from grant resources as well. So in addition to the actual proceeds paid from folks um paying into the stormwater fee itself, the actual expense on stormwater projects and maintenance also reflects grant revenue as well. Correct. So what I would say is and and when I look at there's three huge projects that are in the budget right now as well as all the inlets, right? Do they all need to be done at one time to where we're not only raising the earned income tax, but we are smacking people with a property tax bill? Bucks County Bucks County is about to hit us with a a 2 mill increase. The school district hasn't even said what they're going to do,

right? Yeah. It's it's challenging to weigh um you know sort of the opportunities and you know difficulties in front of the board of supervisors against what other governments are doing um with their responsibilities also. Um it is my advice to the board and I think that advice is backed up by our professional staff and consultants uh that they do sort of pursue these projects that are in the budget based on not only our current need but future need of those backlog of projects due to underinvestment in the past.

Okay. I think if jump in for a second. I think what our thought was is what is the cost of not doing these projects for the future? Like would this mean and we had talked about how much more these projects would cost if we didn't do them? How much more damage would be done? And we're looking at possibly having to raise taxes again in the future if we don't do some of these projects. So I think that's what we were really faced with also. And and I'm not saying don't do them. And I'm not saying we're waiting five and 10 years to do them. So when I look at the ADA curb ramps, past budgets we've spent what around 300,000. We're ramping that up like 450,000 for a lot of curb ramps we probably don't have to touch. We can

Yeah, we're not you know that. Yeah, it's a good point. One of the ADA ramp sort of challenges is um you know that I sort of ask myself and I ask our team too like are we looking at a ramp that like the requirements changed and that's why it's out of compliance? Are we looking at a ramp that's actually damaged or are we looking somewhere where there's no ramp where there should be? Um, I would say the the projects that we're looking at for next year are the latter two. You know, we're not just updating ramps because the requirements change from year to year and no one's really going to notice. We're looking at actual damage infrastructure that needs to be maintained.

And importantly, a detail that we talked about earlier under the consent agenda is often what kind of drives the pace of doing those ADA ramps is when we're paving because when we go in to touch any other infrastructure in order to comply with the ADA, we have to go in and do that. And so that's kind of one of the domino effects of if we want to pick up the pace on paving, which is a policy prior policy priority, we also then in turn have to pick up the pace on doing curb ramps, right? So if we cut a couple mills off the increase, 2 million, so four mills, right? And push some of these projects. Oh, I'm sorry. I bas bas if we cut a couple mills. Let's just say we if we cut a couple mills. Okay.

Right. Next year we're expecting about another 3 million increase in their earned income tax. Yeah. That would cover some of the projects that we pushed off without burdening our taxpayers and without looking like we are just taxing and spending. Um we still have other things that

taxing and spending is sort of like a subjective argument. Um, we looked at a lot of different models with the board of supervisors and even more with the budget team internally to try to figure out what that looks like. Um, candidly, I hope the board doesn't mind me saying, we looked at models internally that showed real estate tax increases um, at a proposed rate of like 10 mills. Um, you know, we, you know, early models that I wasn't a part of in the spring were looking at like seven and nine as the number. Um, I think to get down to six was really good. Um, you know, to cut four mills off of that and we kind of listed that 2 million in funding as to what that looked like. Um, we're also pushing some capital projects out. You know, we're going to be talking a lot about capital projects in the first quarter of the year that will drive the 27 budget process. Um, I'm optimistic about the 27 budget process, you know, a year in advance. Um, you know, but I sort of acknowledge that there's a bunch of different ways to sort of um, you know, approach this, right? No way is perfect. Um, but we tried to get to a a place where sort of there was community buyin and certainly a reflection of the board of supervisors policy priorities. You know, look, building the budget is difficult. um you know analyzing this financial information sort of the needs of the township uh especially as the new guy on the block is really really challenging but what's even harder is the job that the board of supervisors have right and so I sort of say like the budget book is supposed to sort of be like a reflection pool right like can they look at that board at that budget document which is a statement of their policy priorities and see themselves and their priorities within it and then in this scenario I have four who have different you know sort of priorities that they need to achieve and so I think we've done a good job at getting there but that doesn't mean there weren't different ways to approach All right. And I'm not saying you guys did a bad job.

Yeah, you're asking a good question.

If I can add a little color to the real estate millage breakdown, uh, because we're talking about a just over a 6 mill increase, that entire millage increase is entirely wrapped up in fire services and parks and recreation open space. There the general fund is not benefiting from the real estate in any shape and form. Um, and so 3/4 of that real estate tax increase is just for fire and the balance of that is just for parks and open space maintenance. And we're catching heat from that, right? I mean, I saw a Facebook comment that said, "Okay, you're increasing fire apparatus and the fire fund tax, but we're still not going to have 247 career." And it's a valid question. We're not, right? It's funding the existing model we have with the addition of a lieutenant to the career engine. Um, you know, but we're still relying on the primarily volunteer fire service, which is not without its challenges. Um, you know, so there's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of pain points in there, but I think it's a step in the right direction with a lot more work to do. [gasps]

Thank you. Sorry to bo sorry to bother you. Uh that is a 6% mill is am I to understand that correctly? 6.08 real estate mills. Okay. 6 mills. Okay. Uh now about the waste u the rainwater tanks the storm water fees. Okay. I stand corrected. Just making sure we're on the same page. Exactly. My my question is that how come that's not being put in with the regular real estate bill?

That's against the law. It's a fee. So, we're the way that we're collecting that um is the way that makes the um you know, sort of makes the most um sense in terms of collecting it. So, we pay $40,000 a year to collect that um sort of attached to real estate bill, but we can't make it um sort of subject to the real estate tax because it's it's a user based fee. And just to make sure I'm understanding your question, is your question why administratively can we can we not capture that fee when you pay your real estate tax bill as a separate item like your trash fee? Correct. So the township did evaluate that option and it was actually more costly to go down that road uh than going with the option that we ended up choosing which was um appointing Burkheimr as a third party service.

And how much is Burkheimr receiving as compensation on uh it's a per bill fee and it works out to about $40,000 a year. Okay. Uh I misunderstood your question at first. I apologize. It's okay. Okay. Now, uh two one other question and a general statement. Uh now, how does Middletown get a percentage from the from Harrisburg for state store sales? State store, liquor store. Uh no, the township does not.

So, so since they're a host community for a state store, they don't get any uh compensation on that. and also some clarification earlier on um over assessments on property. I lived in New Town back when all the bulldozers were going nuts back in the late 80s. So everybody was appealing their assessments and anybody and the county got tired of hearing the assess the appeals. So what they did was anybody that bought property in New Town, Northampton, and I believe lower Mayfield, they did a blanket reduction because they were tired of hearing the appeals. So just I understand where the township is coming from on that. So just a little uh FYI on that, but I understand you guys have done a lot of folks have done a lot of work. It's not going uh unnoticed. It's appreciated and thank you very much for your time. Thank you.

All right. Um, so, oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yep. Okay. Uh, so I think that concludes the presentation from um the budget team who we'll thank here in a second. So, next there are a few administrative steps. So, the board of supervisors is going to do a few things. It's going to consider a budget as one action item and then it has a number of different resolutions uh that Mr. Travala is going to walk us through the one resolution that is not on the agenda tonight is the earned income tax and so that is a result of uh a mistake uh which was totally our fault. So when we advertise a change in the rate of the earned income tax which the board of supervisors authorized in November they have to advertise that for 3 weeks in a row a month out before they take adoption. and we unintentionally said that we are going to meet on the 17th of December, which is two days from now, at 7 PM. And so, if the board of supervisors adopts the budget tonight, uh which we will find out momentarily, the board will reconvene in a separate public meeting at 7:00 p.m. in 2:20, which is right above us, uh this Wednesday, to uh consider that earned income tax. Um we're sort of uh identifying from the board if they adopt the budget tonight that it is an indication that they will fund that budget with the earned income tax uh on Wednesday because realistically you can't fund the budget without increasing the earned income tax which we've talked about extensively through our process and through tonight. Uh so for anyone who's sort of paying attention to the website or newspaper of general circulation, there's a separate meeting this Wednesday at 7 p.m. right upstairs to consider that EIT rate um which will be a a um a official vote on the EIT which would be reflective of the potential vote of the budget tonight. So are there any questions about that specifically? Okay. Uh for those of you who are also following the BET project, there's a meeting here at 6:30 which is a town hall meeting with uh BET Investments who is a developer proposing a project just down the street from here. Um so for anyone who was coming for that meeting and also wants to go upstairs, we'll be here to sort of guide you through that. So that's what's happening. And then uh

next, Mr. Kizak, Mr. Valla are the official action items for the 2026 budget. Okay. Um well, thanks once again to everybody on the team, Mr. Ratliff, Mr. Valor. Um I'm not going to name you all by name because we would be here for another hour. But thank you for everybody, all the township staff, all the directors and everybody that was involved um in this process. And I want to thank my colleagues on the board because this has been a long um and difficult process um and a tremendous amount of effort of effort was put into this um to get us where we are tonight. So, with that, um, I am going to move to adopt the 2026 budget as presented, uh, contingent, of course, upon the adoption of the, uh, real estate tax and earned income tax by resolutions. Is there a second?

I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Corp. There's been a motion and a second. Just to make sure that we are perfectly clear about everything and all on the same page, I'm going to make a a roll call vote on this one. Um, so I'll go to each supervisor one by one. So, um, first myself, I vote uh in favor. Miss Corpal. Yes. Uh, Miss Keane.

I've been really quiet tonight. Um, and it's because I am struggling with a yes vote tonight. Um, I I I want to thank the team for all of their work that they've done. They've put an amazing budget together. They've been extremely transparent in what they've put out there. Um, and again, there's there's a need for it. But throughout my time as a supervisor, I've voted against projects and initiatives that I knew were going to hit up against the budget. And I am one of the few that have been consistently asking, can our budget handle this? Because I know that we've been in the position that we have. Um, you know, I brought up repeatedly the high cost that we pay for ADA ramps. Um, and some of the projects that we do. Um, I voted against the 25 budget because I knew that we were not because I did not agree with the services that it funded, but because I disagreed that it relied on a structural imbalance. Um so again we we you know the the tax increase today that we are proposing is um while it's necessary I can't ignore the fact that we arrived here by delaying difficult choices and spending down reserves rather than confronting it headon. So I really want to thank the team for making this board confront it head on. Um, you know, the last time this township approved a major tax increase like we're seeing tonight, the minority, which I am, supervisor voted no, not to dispute the need for it, but to insist on accountability. Um, so I am hoping that this board, all of you, um, there's there's accountability there. um because it has been 10 years and this has been

something that has you know as we saw know past history um it's something difficult to do and as someone in the minority I am going to have to say no Miss Hannah it's a no okay so the motion fails uh does not pass. So, um, next steps, Mr. Re.

Yeah. Um, so, thank you very much. So, my question to the board of supervisors, um, it is the authority, uh, excuse me, the responsibility of the chief administrative officer, which I am, uh, to present you a balance budget for, uh, proposal, public inspection, and then hopefully adoption uh, before the end of the calendar year. So, we are under a legal obligation uh, in accordance with the secondass township code to adopt a balanced budget going into 2026. So my question to you and our budget team mostly stands behind me at the ready. What changes do you need to the 2026 proposed budget uh that we can make hopefully within the limitations of the law and what we can change in the public inspection review period which is what we are in in order to facilitate an adoption. What changes do we need to the budget? M

Kane, I'll turn it over to you. What what changes can we make to the budget so that you'll vote for it knowing that we have a legal obligation to pass a budget for the end of the year? I will turn it over to Supervisor Hannah. [snorts] I think what we need to do is take a deep look at the um recommendations for some of the people that we would like to hire. Um that could be a consideration. Um and just take a deeper look at some of the things that maybe we can push off maybe to the next year.

So, Miss Kane, you voted against the budget, so I'll just ask you again so that we're not wasting time here tonight. What are the things that you need the township staff to change so that we can have a a budget that we can vote for?

I'd like to ask that we look at continuing to go down the path of is there ways that we can we can cut anything further and where are we on the horizon of making sure that this doesn't happen again. [snorts] So, to the board of supervisors, would you like us to prioritize cutting parks and recreation? Um, would you like to us to prioritize cutting emergency services? Would you like us to prioritize cutting infrastructure? Would you like us to look at staff layoffs? Would you like us to start spending down the sewer sales money? Would you like us to change the fund balance policy of 25% which would put us in jeopardy of losing our triple bond triple uh AAA bond rating? What is it you would like us to prioritize? If there is a more preferable tax rate you would like us to achieve um you know whether it's on the EIT or the real estate and you have a number in mind that we can work towards please let us know what that is. Um I think Mr. Valla has queued up and I'm prepared to go through tonight. um every public presentation we've given over the course of a half a dozen public meetings to review every proposal uh in greater detail than what we did in our overview presentation tonight um to get your feedback in real time and we can make adjustments to the budget and our solicitor can advise as to whether or not we would need to go for another 20-day inspection period. Uh I note today is only the 15th. Uh, so we still have 16 days um until the end of the year. If that means meeting on New Year's Eve, Christmas Eve, all of those things are in play. Um, but specific guidance from you at this point with 16 days left in the year is super important. The more clear of a target you can give us to try to achieve, uh, the better.

Yeah. And and I just want to express a little bit of frustration because um, Miss Kane, you were involved in the budget process every step of the way. You were every meeting, every conversation. Um and this this budget that is currently before the board was one that was developed by all four of us with all township staff um collaboratively. And so until today there was no indication from you that you were um dissatisfied with the budget or weren't prepared to vote for it. And it's a little disappointing that you so far have not articulated very clearly what are the specific areas that you have concerns with or you would like us to change because we now have literally two weeks to make whatever changes need to be made for this budget or we are in violation of the law. So um and I'll I'll ask Miss Hannah the same question, but I'll start with you. What what please give some guidance to the township staff so they know what to do so that we can get a budget passed. I was hoping that, you know, as as the board that has been in power for 10 years, that we could get accountability of the decisions that have been made over the past 10 years to not increase and be where we're at.

So, it sounds like you guys have to have me as a yes in order to pass it. So, that accountability is not there.

I used the word accountability several times. I think I certainly took accountability for the decisions that we've made as long as I've been on this board. Um, good, bad, and otherwise. So, um I I don't know what that means, but I I and I it'd be disappointing if this comes down to a political battle. Um because we're talking about in in in very serious terms that if we can't pass a budget and the only thing that we can fund are essential services, life for the residents in this community is going to dramatically change. Um so, again, I want to pass a budget by the end of the year. So, what specifically can the township staff do to fix this budget so that we can have a budget that passes? It is a responsibility of each of us as elected officials who swore to uphold our oaths to the Constitution and the ordinance of this township to pass a budget. So, let's figure this out. Let's work through this as long as it takes. Miss Kane, you said repeatedly how this unfortunately this increase was needed and that this was what the residents needed in order to keep our quality of life here. I've heard you say that over and over during this process and I think that at the 11th hour for you to come and play this political game is complete nonsense.

I disagree. I think what we need to do is we need to ensure that we um provide the services that our residents expect that level of service. Uh I think we need to investigate uh possibly looking at the additional hires that we were looking at at the different departments. Um and that could help us lower the impact on our residents. Um, I'm committed to that and I think, um, I'm willing to say specifically those are the things that we can do. Those are actual things that we can look at. I want to know specifically, Supervisor Kaine, what is it that you would like to change specifically in the budget?

I would ask the same question because you voted no. I just told you I we have a lot of people that we're adding. we can look at those people and still keep somewhat of the same services and the level of services for our residents. Uh I'm willing to do that and and I don't think we need to go through a a huge process to do that. Am I wrong? All right. So we have one request is that to that we look further at the staffing.

So the budget team is online. So guys do me a favor. um figure out the reduction of the five public works staff but make sure that we realize that that was due to decrease um the total cost of construction projects. Uh so see sort of what that what that does u eliminating those five um but sort of offsetting the increase in um in drainage projects. So take a look at that uh and then look at the fire lieutenant with the reduction that will maintain the same service uh same level of service to the residents. it will continue to put the career engine in danger as they respond to emergency services, but if we're prioritizing the residents and not the responders, we can eliminate that lieutenant position. Um, I'm deeply concerned about that decision, you know, from a a responder safety perspective. Uh, but let's look at what that does also. And then Nick, if you want to raise your hand when we have that that figured out. Um, to the board, it would be very very helpful if it's possible. Maybe it's not possible here. Um, it would be helpful to have a target in mind. Do you have a number in mind that we're trying to reduce? Do you have a millage rate or EIT rate that you were trying to achieve? I I can't emphasize enough how important specificity is here.

Are e are either of you prepared to provide that kind of a number right now? I am not. Miss Kane,

I am not. At this point, I can only rely upon the feedback that we received um in the very detailed, open, public, transparent process um which was that everything that is currently in the proposed budget had the full support of the board of supervisors. So again, you know, we're here um to serve the board and to serve the public as we all are. These are challenging um situations. So, uh, feedback is required to to try to achieve a majority yes. But I I do feel like we're sort of moving blindly through. Are we trying to get to to zero? Do we want to start talking about spending down reserves? Do we want to cut expenses? Like feedback is important so that we can deliver deliver you a product that instills your confidence.

Mr. Kzak, do we want to take a recess? I'm I'm weighing whether I want to just adjourn the meeting um for tonight and regroup because I'm not optimistic that any progress is going to be made um at this late hour given the the impact that we find ourselves in.

So what I would request that the board of supervisors do um is to and the solicitor can weigh in here is to continue the meeting. So you don't adjourn this official meeting. to continue the December 15th meeting that began at 7:00 p.m. until December 17th at 7:00 p.m. where we would reconvene the board to consider the issue starting from the agenda point that you're at tonight. In addition, you would be able to consider um the agenda items for the 17th, which is only uh the EIT rate. Um Mr. Spazto, if I didn't explain any of that correctly, please jump in. No, you explained it correctly. Although I would want to uh a vote would have to happen and specifically mention the uh the ordinances and resolutions that would be continued until the 17th to be considered.

Okay. So I would need to make a motion to continue the meeting um specifically to consider and then I would list the the resolutions that need to be considered at the continuation. Is that what you're saying? Yes. The ordinance is the the specific one that that would definitely need to be considered because it's a it was an ordinance that was advertised to be considered at this meeting. So you announce it that it's going to be continued to a specific date. This in this case the December 17th special meeting at 7 o'clock. Okay.

All right. Well, let me make that motion and see how the votes on that land. I mean, obviously, if the consensus of the board is they want to stay here and keep working and and we want to roll our sleeves up and see if there's a way we can work through this and and come up with a a solution, I'm not unwilling to do that. I'm just not particularly optimistic based on the comments of my colleagues. Um, all right. So, I am going to make a motion to continue this meeting to December 17th. Um, at that December 17th continuation, we would uh consider the following agenda items. Consideration of adopting the 2026 budget. Consideration of enacting ordinance number 25-08, increasing the maximum real estate tax levies for fire protection and ambulance and rescue purposes. Consideration of authorizing resolution number 25-28R, establishing real estate tax levies for 2026 fiscal year. Consideration of authorizing resolution number 25-29R, waving the limitations of the secondass township code for purpose of paying salaries and benefits for fire suppression and ambulance and other rescue personnel. And obviously we already have on the agenda for that meeting uh the earned income tax resolution. Is that accurate?

All right. Is there a second? I'll

second. Got a motion and a second. Any board questions? Any questions from the public? Yes, sir. Go ahead. Is it already on? Hi, my name is Ryan Leighton. I live at 43 Cable Road in Levittown. Um, I've been coming to meetings for years now. Um, and I have to say I am uh, full transparency, I am uh, supervisor elect. I will be taking office in a month. Some of these people up here will be my colleagues. Um, and I have to say I am very disappointed. um and feel misled at the sudden um delay of passing a budget. Um particularly you, Supervisor Kane, who's someone I was looking forward to working with because I feel like we share a lot of opinions about things protecting our community. um you have voted on many budgets and I think that it's dishonest and it's wrong for you to not vote for this budget considering this is a political decision on your part. Um you're up for election in two years. You don't want to run on that. I get it. Um but you weren't put on this board to play politics. You were put on the board to put the township first and you're not doing that. You're putting your career first and that is really frustrating me. I would disagree and I look forward to working with you.

I would. Yeah, I'm can't say I can say the same right now. Um, this is politics. This is not what people want. This isn't good for our township. You saw what we're facing. A decrease in safety, projects not getting done, and you don't bring anything up until now. You voted on plenty of budgets that you said you knew this was coming for years, but you voted for those budgets, but now that your political career is on the line, now you're going to finally stand up and get some courage. That is not It's cowardice. You're being a coward. Not what this is. You are being a coward. That is not what this is. You should vote to pass this budget. People have worked hard. Supervisor Hannah, where's your words for her?

Yeah, my words for her because I know that this is political. Don't challenge my intelligence to the people in this room. You even said yourself, you're in the minority. You made it political in your speech. You made it political. I'm in the minority and there are three reserve leaders who put them first, not their political careers. Thank you. So, if I'm understanding correctly, for an average regular three-bedroom, one bath, two-bedroom home, you we're talking with the earned income tax, what, a $550 a year?

I think that's the average

increase. So, do I want taxes to be raised? No. Do I think we need to cut our police force and fire force? No. But do we necessarily need things like a new street sweeper? I've lived in this community for 59 years and never seen a street sweeper used once in my neighborhood. I don't know if we need three new fire trucks or not. if we're are we converging to a single fire company or are we still going to have all the firehouses? Can we can we get away with two fire trucks and you know whatot? I think those are the things that we need to try to look at. Maybe the other thing is do we increase the taxes by half of what you're talking about this year to make it a little bit easier for the homeowners to swallow. and then knowing that, hey, we're going to raise it the other half next year or two years from now. You know, we we're getting hit with again, and a lot of these things aren't that expensive. You're getting hit with the $60 a year storm water fee, which I think is BS because the township hasn't done anything in my opinion to maintain the storm water in the last 30 years. So, what are we going to wait another year, two years, uh, you know, to do some of the main things like that?

I I appreciate your points and and they're good ones and, um, that would all be that would all make a lot of sense if I had any sense that what's going on right now had anything to do with a good faith effort to try to refine this budget to make it more palatable for residents. That unfortunately is not what is happening tonight. There's been a political decision. Um, if I listen, I am going to try to remain optimistic that in the next two weeks or in the next couple of days or whatever that the four of us can work together and find a budget that everybody can sign off on and pass. Um, that's that's my hope and that's going to be my goal. I thought we had that uh walking in tonight. I don't know what we've been doing for the last I don't even know four months if that wasn't it. Um, but apparently, you know, that wasn't good enough. So, here we are. Um, so you're I'm not saying your points aren't valid and those aren't the types of things that we should be considering. And if folks want to do that, I'm open-minded to all those conversations.

Yeah. I mean, I hate to hear all the political stuff. I mean, I don't know what happened to the days when you were Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, whatever, but we all were able to sit down at the end of the day at the bar and drink together and conversate to where, you know, now it's like everybody hates each other because of whatever their political party You know, I I had genuinely and honestly and earnestly hoped that that's the way things worked in Middletown. I had hoped that we were above all that. And I can tell you that in the time that I've worked with these four amazing people, that's how we have operated. We have always put the interest of the township above politics, we have worked together, regardless of political party. Um, this is the first time that I that I've been on this board uh with these individuals that something like this has occurred. So,

I understand. And I mean, you know, like I said, the stuff like that, the little stuff, parks and recreation. Okay. Well, you know what? Tol wants to build over here. And if I don't think he should be allowed to, but hey, you want to build here, then you're going to need to donate $10,000 worth of playground equipment. I mean, I know that's probably shady and you can't do it or whatever, but who cares? Who cares? You want to you want to pay to play, you know? So,

just want to point out the fire protection study that's in the budget um actually will is intended to address a lot of the questions that you asked, but if that's something the board um doesn't want to see in the budget and wants to see come out, um you know, feel free to let us know that also as we um try to drive towards something we can get adopted. And I should probably also point out just from a procedural standpoint that the secondass township code contemplates that if at this point now that the proposed budget has been advertised, you have to readvertise the budget if and only if you make a single line item change greater than 25% and that advertisement period is for 10 days.

Okay. Well, we put ourselves in a very difficult situation.

Yes, sir. Um, yeah, Dana, you know, I've backed you up on many of your minority votes that you have taken. Um, I've fought with Dawn. I've heck fought with Mike a ton. I fought with Bernardet. And I've I've actually not fought with you much at all. Um because there's a [clears throat] few things that you've voted against that I've certainly agreed with, but it just seems like and I'm going to say it. It seems like one of the bosses called you and said take don't take this vote or go vote uh vote down because it does seem like a counter counter move. You had the protection of a 4-1 for a long time on hard votes. [clears throat] And honestly, it it really is disappointing to see, hey, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to take this stand especially with what you what you said in your speech that you're going to you're planning to oh you know I've been really heming and hawing but again I keep my ear to the ground and you were involved the entire time since August since we started on this budget. Again I was not unfortunately I was not physically involved uh this year for personal reasons. Um, but I do know that you were you put your voice into a lot of this budget. So there is only one answer as to why you're doing this tonight the way you're doing this rather than doing what is needed for the township long-term, setting us up. Um, you [clears throat] you all you hear in

the federal uh government that the tax codes only opened every 10 years. Well, it's been 10 years since we've basically opened up the tax code relative to the township to raise taxes. Yes, it sucks. I hate it, but it is something that we need to do. I I like I said, I've looked over it. I've looked over the budget. I've kept my ear to the ground. And um you know, if you want to cut, like, who do you want to cut? You're going to have to come here with a plan. You can't just say, "Oh, I'm going to say no to this to to this because it's an because it's a vote that I'm going to take as a minority vote." If you're going to do that, have a plan in place. One thing in my personal life that irritates me is when somebody comes and says just negative Nancy themselves all the time, and that's my Western Pennsylvania coming out. Oh, I'm just going to say no, I don't have a plan. Um, I'm certain that I've lost a couple prospective dates and and girlfriends because I get so irritated with them. Where are we going to eat tonight? Do you want to eat a here? No. Do you want to eat here? No. Well, give me a freaking plan. It's the same type of thing over and over again of, oh, I'm just going to say no without a plan. And if you have a plan, please speak up and say, uh, this is what I'm looking at. And don't just and don't spring it out on us at the at the 11th hour. Literal 11th hour.

I get it. And but we've had two people now come to the podium talking about me. But there were two no votes [clears throat] today. And what did I just say? Bernardet had a plan. Bernardet said, "I would like to look at the hiring that we're looking at." I did not hear that. I'm going after you because you did not say, "Oh, uh, yeah, we don't need XYZ." And if you started doing that, I wouldn't be as infuriated right now as I am. And maybe maybe Bernardet's right, but I can I I can say that it feels like yours is a unthinking no.

It is not thinking no. I can guarantee you that. Then give me something that you want to cut in the budget or you want to raise in the budget or what you want to change in the budget. Give us something tonight that you want to do.

I would like to change the policies that are in place that require us to add additional staff. I think we have a lot of dollars that we pay out and we've created an environment at in this municipality where we pay more than what we should. So I [clears throat] and again that is not something that I can address. It is not something that I can choose to change because I do not have a say. I think I would drive more dollars to different grants. I do not have a say in what grants we go after. So my vote was about accountability for the past 10 years of what we've done at the township because honestly while I have had a say in this budget and I think I can thank the new township manager for that and the team but in all reality why we are here is because one there was not a a appetite to increase taxes even though I had been saying it and I didn't even vote for I voted a no on the 25 budget cuz I knew we were going to be here. The amount did not have to be as significant as it was because we should have addressed this 3 four years ago. So, I understand where you're coming from and I understand why you see what you see tonight, but my hope tonight was to drive accountability for the policies and decisions that have been made over the past 10 years. So you're willing to you are willing to

residents of of she voted yes. I voted yes. As the majority on this board, you are willing to I just Well, here's the thing. If this is the case, if this is how you feel and you adjourn tonight, I want to see something Wednesday. If that's the case, I am willing to give you the the benefit of the doubt.

But up until this very specific instant, for the last 20 minutes, I didn't hear anything from you. And that's where this is coming from. Also, a cold I've been nursing.

Listen, I you and I have have been here and agreed on a lot and I get that and a lot of those agreements are what I'm talking about are what is driven here. So I understand where you're coming from but know that it took me time to get here and this is where I I can lay my head down tonight and be comfortable with where we're at because I'm trying to drive accountability. Again, I will give you the grace if you have a plan that you can bring. That's I is it's less about the no for me and more about the why the no. Every single time that we have agreed that you've taken a no on, you had explicitly given your reason for that no. And [clears throat] the irritation in my voice is because tonight up until this very second, you did not give a you did not give a you did not give a uh specific reason. And if you want to come with on Wednesday, if we want to adjourn until Wednesday and you want to come with a specific plan, I am all ears. And I'm going to put this out here as well, Bernardet, that goes for you as well.

I got it. Hi, it's me again. Um, I'm not sure how this whole process works, but um, and I'm not sure exactly what it's Dawn. Dana, I'm sorry. I I'm not sure exactly what you're driving at. Um, but I thought that the gentleman over here in the second row had like a good kind of compromise if you're talking about numbers and trying to like you need specific I'm sorry, specificity.

I I appreciate that, ma'am. I don't want I don't want to cut you off, but at the end of the day, what Miss Kane has just articulated is that she basically is making this vote to send a message because she didn't like things how things have been done for the last 10 years. I'm not sure that how that's going to pay for police officers or pay to pave roads or pay to make life better for the members of this community, but it I don't believe that this has anything to do with trying to make any changes to the budget. I think basically we're getting the message that she's not going to support any budget because she's trying to send a message. So, um I appreciate what you're saying. We'll be back here in a couple of days and we're going to try it again. But I think right now the motion that is on the table is to adjourn for tonight or continue for tonight and take a couple days to breathe. Um hopefully give my colleagues an opportunity to think about and come up with some ideas that they would like to see to hopefully get a budget together that um can be passed. Um and hopefully we can do that on the 17th.

Okay. I am not gonna be here on the 17th because I have an engagement with my mom, but um I want to thank you for like entertaining my questions and um trying to be as transparent as possible. Don't be a stranger. Come back again. It was nice having you. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. There's been a motion in a second. All those in favor say I. Oh, sorry. I didn't see. Sorry. I'm going to try to be brief. Oh, no. It's okay. Um, just for the general public, if there was a 3-1 vote tonight, the budget would have been passed. Correct. Correct. Okay. So, assuming the EIT passed on Wednesday.

All right. So, so I think it's a little unfair, you [clears throat] know, to bring up politics and, you know, start attacking a specific member of the board um when [snorts] the majority party could have just passed this. Okay. And I understand that that we all have our own opinions on things, right? But it seems like and and look, I'm friends with Eric and and Ryan. I just don't believe [clears throat] that, you know, we hold one member of the board accountable and not another. Miss Kane doesn't have to have an answer tonight. She has thought about it. We talked at the budget meeting on the 4th and I could clearly see that she was on the fence. Okay. So, at the end of the day, I don't think that's necessarily fair. Um, yes, the board needs to work together, but we don't all have to agree and we don't have to start attacking people because we don't agree. I wouldn't vote for this budget. And that's because I don't believe all the spending needs to occur. I don't believe the millage rate needs to be increased as much as it is. And actually agree with their earned income tax. I thought it should have been implemented before. I think she thinks it should have been implemented before. I think it should have been advertised before. Okay. So, if we want to get political, some could say it didn't get advertised before because we had an election coming up. But I'm not going to go there. What I am going to say is is is if she's a no, then you guys pass a budget, okay? And you guys stand by your budget that you passed.

It doesn't work that way. It's not minorities and majorities. We are four individuals that each get a vote. So, I don't I disagree with that assessment that it's somehow us versus them or anything. I think your points about if if this was about there are there is spending in this budget that is irresponsible or inappropriate or unnecessary and we can cut this and reallocate that so we can reduce the tax. I'm I'm willing to have that conversation. We've been having those conversations for 4 months. What's frustrating me is that we walked in here tonight with what I believed was a budget everybody was prepared to vote for. And so now we find ourselves in a troubling situation because we have two weeks before the end of the year to pass a budget. So if we're going to make the kind of changes you're you're advocating for, and I'm not discrediting them, I'm open to having those that dialogue. We just don't have a lot of time to do it now.

Correct. But to to be upset that it didn't get passed tonight when it would only took three votes and then to put all the burden on one person calling it political, I don't believe that's very productive either. So, I'll just leave it at that because it's late at night, but you guys could could have got it done. Thank you. Yep. All right. Anybody else want to comment? Yes, sir.

The accountability question or statement that keeps coming up. So, as like you say, everybody else has another full-time job. Everybody's accountable for what they do at work every day. So I guess one of the things that started popping my head with accountability is besides police officer and firefighters, what other cuts to the bills, the people that work in this office, the people that work other spots, are they accountable for their production every day? And how who Okay. And who is on top of seeing that? So is can in the last year was there one layoff in the in the uh township? Um I don't think so. When was the last time somebody was laid off in the township? Do you want people to be laid off?

I'm asking a question. I I can get laid off every day on my job. I'm asking a question. So when was the last time somebody in this township was laid off? 2020 co Okay. So, how many people since that have been hired? Additional positions that were not just replacements. I believe there's been six. Five of which were public safety. Okay. But do you So, back to and I'm hoping I don't know if this is where she was stating at where is the accountability for everybody's production every day.

So, we have a we have an or chart, you know, essentially of who reports to who, right? Right. So if you look at our orchark, we have the residents at the top. They elect the board of supervisors, that's these folks. Uh they appoint a chief administrative officer, that's me. Um I have an assistant township manager, that's Mr. Valla. Uh we have a department head over every department. Um some of them have assistant directors or captains depending on who we're talking about. Um and then the rest of the team sort of filters out beneath them. I can send you that orchard if you're interested. I think it's in the budget book. Okay. So but there is accountability for what production is is done and how many people are doing it.

Yes, I would say that we have a robust organization. Um you know I mean we have all sort of the necessary sort of HR infrastructure, performance evaluations, job descriptions. We hold our department heads accountable for sort of the project task um and sort of performance indicators that they're held held to every year. Um that's not to say that we're perfect. We're far from it. But that doesn't mean that we can't get better. I would say for a township of this size with the amount of responsibilities we have, we're pretty lean, which I'm happy about. Um, but yeah, I mean, there's certainly a culture of accountability within Middletown Township Government. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Motion to continue. There's been a second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed.

All right. Carries 4. We are continued until December 17th. Okay. So, for everyone who's here who's considering attending the BET investments meeting, that will be in this room at 6:30 p.m. Um, that's the BET investment project um that they're proposing to do um uh apartments down here on the corner. Um that's at 6:30 here. The board of supervisors will be upstairs, so our team will be standing outside the door to help you sort of get upstairs at 2:20 where that board meeting will be. Um it'll be all of those things. I I just want to point out to the board, we didn't motion to adjourn. We actually just motioned. [laughter] We continued the budget presentation. There's still technically other business and the adjournment.

I thought we I thought that was just it was definitely not please. We can I just Okay. Thank you.