Dysfunction evidently rules again in tiny Colwyn Borough, Delaware County.
On Thursday night, its manager was fired at a raucous council meeting; she disputed the action and then locked herself in Borough Hall overnight.
“I don’t believe I am out of a job,” Paula Brown said Friday.
The latest episode followed a contentious council meeting during which Brown and council members shouted at each other and traded accusations – and they still don’t agree on the outcome.
Scranton could have a difficult time shedding its distressed city status because of the pay raises and other perks in the revised police contract, a city councilman warned.
The city has until 2020 to successfully exit the state’s Act 47 financially distressed municipalities program. The new seven-year police contract approved by a split city council Thursday and signed by Mayor Bill Courtright Friday will hinder the city because the contract locks in pay raises and benefits beyond 2020, said Councilman Bill Gaughan.
He questioned whether the contract extension would “tie the city’s hands” by eliminating the possibility of negotiating in 2017 savings in a new police contract, while at the same time locking in raises and benefits a year beyond the Act 47 deadline of 2020.
Mr. Courtright disagreed that the contract extension will make it more difficult for the city to successfully exit Act 47.
Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Dauphin County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
HARRISBURG – State officials generated a full house Wednesday morning with emails hinting at big news related to the city’s financial recovery.
And many the people boosting the typically sparse attendance – Harrisburg residents, reporters, elected and appointed officials – seemed underwhelmed by what they heard at the Municipal Financial Recovery Advisory Committee’s meeting in City Hall in Harrisburg.
Few numbers, no documents, scant detail – all of that is to come, likely by mid-August when debt resolutions deals are filed in court.
Instead, the point was to broadcast an attitude adjustment among stakeholders involved in negotiations to resolve more than $600 million in debt, state-appointed receiver William Lynch said.
Editor’s note: We are pleased to see that the mayor and council president have put aside their differences and are working together. It’s making a difference!
Like dominoes falling, Scranton has finally adopted a revised recovery plan, and because of that the city now will receive a $2.2 million state aid package and a $6.25 million short-term bank loan that will allow the city to pay bills and payrolls while continuing to seek long-term borrowing to fund its 2012 budget.
The flurry of separate, yet related, developments has bought the city some time to resolve its short-term financial crisis, however the city still needs to secure other borrowing to end the year in black, Mayor Chris Doherty and council President Janet Evans said.
The stage was set with the city’s proposed revised recovery plan having received approval in recent days from its Act 47 recovery coordinator, Pennsylvania Economy League. That approval will allow the city to receive the $2.2 million state aid package from PEL’s overseer, the state Department of Community and Economic Development. With PEL and DCED on board with the city’s recovery plan and the state aid package on the way, the city was able to secure on Wednesday night a $6.25 million tax- anticipation note from Amalgamated Bank of New York and Washington, D.C., the mayor and Mrs. Evans announced late Thursday afternoon in front of City Hall, shortly before the council meeting.
“This buys us time,” Mr. Doherty said of the bank loan and state aid package. “With the recovery plan being passed, it sends a positive message for our future borrowing.”
Between sips of soda at Sal’s Pizza on Linden Street, Nick Noll recounted his time as a Scranton business owner.
His business, Keystone Granite and Marble, was on Diamond Avenue in Scranton but moved to Old Forge earlier this year as he saw deepening financial problems and grew tired of the business privilege tax.
“As soon as I moved to Old Forge I felt like I received a raise,” Mr. Noll said. “It no longer became a question of whether or not I should pay my taxes or take my family on vacation.”
Mr. Noll said the increase in the gross receipts tax proposed in the city’s revised recovery plan from 0.75 percent to 1 percent is “counterproductive” to bringing business back into the city.
Read more: http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/business/businesses-worry-over-deepening-financial-crisis-1.1354898
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