The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Opinion

November 21, 2008

4-mill tax hike plan puts Sharon on road to oblivion

Here's an important question for Sharon City Council as members consider the mayor’s tentative budget that includes a whopping 4-mill tax increase:

Who in their right mind would move a business or industry into your town and why would any current business want to stay?

In the economic climate today, a 10-percent tax increase is a death knell for the local town which already has the highest property taxes. When starting up a business or industry, the owners look for viable communities that provide a reasonable tax rate because it directly affects their profits.

What about the tax-battered home owners? Residents are trapped. They can’t move since few people would want to buy their house in Sharon and pay those high taxes.

Resident Al Schreckengost summed up the feelings of many city residents when the increase was proposed at a recent meeting: “Sooner or later I’m going to give you people my house ... because I ain’t going to be able to pay for it.”

While the federal government is bailing out big business, communities must fend for themselves. Raising taxes that much at this critical time when unemployment is increasing and people can’t even afford to pay their mortgages is ludicrous.

Sharon is straddled with an albatross around its neck in the form of a fully paid fire department. When only a few municipalities in Pennsylvania have such a luxury — or tax drain, depending on your interpretation — that is unaffordable for a starving community like Sharon.

While we realize that the department has good, dependable workers, the city can no longer afford a fully paid department.

Since Mayor Bob Lucas and Councilman Mike Donato are both retired firefighters, they need to meet with the firemen and work out a contract change that can reduce the cost to the city. Supposedly one solution was that firemen do EMT services as well. That’s fine. But the city needs a lot more, including an increased work load for the firemen who at times just sit around waiting for fire calls.

In Farrell, a “distressed community” under the state’s Act 47, some city employees are combination firefighters and street workers. They handle street maintenance unless called away for a fire. That should be an option for Sharon which could reduce the number of overall employees.

While no one likes to see people lose jobs, it’s happening everywhere in the business world. It’s time Sharon officials start running the city like a business. For example: How can the city continue to afford a confidential clerk for a mayor? Businesses don’t provide the level of health benefits for employees like the city, something that needs to be changed with higher increases in employee contributions to insurance premiums.

Councilmen Frank Connelly and Bob Messina were against the increase, as all council members should be. These are tough times and require tough decisions.

Council and the mayor need to sit down and come up with solutions that will provide a zero tax increase in Sharon, where taxes are already way too high to attract businesses or even new residents.

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