The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

August 16, 2008

Greenville leaders weigh debt recovery plan at retreat

By Matt Snyder

GREENVILLE — All seven Greenville council members, the borough manager and the mayor spent about 6 1/2 hours Saturday hunched over a 268-point list of suggestions to cure the borough’s financial woes.

With a veggie plate and bottles of water, and a half-hour break for lunch, the group met from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to go over, point-by-point, the changes suggested for Greenville’s Act 47 recovery plan.

The retreat –– more of a work session –– will produce a master list of Act 47 changes set to be discussed Sept. 4 and approved Sept. 9, if all goes right, said council President Pete Longiotti.

Act 47 is the state’s debt recovery plan for communities in financial peril. Greenville’s original plan was put together in 2003, a year after the state declared the borough distressed.

Combining some of the supervisory jobs put in place by the borough is one of the money-saving resolutions council is looking at, Longiotti said.

Councilman Brian Shipley said the borough is looking for ways to get more bang for its buck, but stopped short of saying for certain whether that means cutting staff.

However, he added, “It’s no secret in any operation, particularly in government, that your number one cost is wages and benefits of employees.”

Some of their more creative solutions, he said, include cross-training employees so their hours produce more results.

Council will also be looking into getting a break on health insurance costs in upcoming negotiations with police, fire and public works employees, Mayor Dick Miller said.

The borough wants a bigger pay-in on health insurance coverage, including for public employees to pay 5 percent of their premiums and then 25 percent of any increase to their premiums in years to follow.

But Miller said the plan is dicey and depends on contract negotiations, set to begin at the end of this year when contracts for all three groups are up.

There is a longstanding question on whether being in Act 47 –– which does change rules on how much residents can be taxed –– also lets municipalities break existing contracts, Miller said.

Among the other recommendations Miller said council members decided Saturday to add to their plan:

• Finding a new way to pay for park maintenance, such as going to user fees, because of the usage the park gets from residents outside Greenville.

• Dropping elected officials off the Sanitary Authority’s board and no longer installing council members to fill vacant slots.

• Staying in touch with residents by sending mailers out with their utility bills and updating the borough’s Web site more often.

• Looking into contracting out public works and what kind of savings that could bring.

Miller said a lot of the recommendations –– such as contracting out –– are “boilerplate,” or a list of common-sense items Greenville ought to be doing. But the resolutions work by setting goals for the borough.

“Now this puts it in writing, puts a target out for council,” Miller said. “A level of operation they ought to reach.”

Other suggestions for the Act 47 plan were dropped. Among the highlights was a plan that would require the borough to roll over its year-end balance into a capitol improvement fund.

By going automatically into capital improvement, Miller said it locks government out for using the balance for other purposes or providing tax decreases.

Also nixed was locking in the earned-income tax for good, he said. “I thought they were painting themselves into a corner, not allowing flexibility.”

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