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Arnold prevents police layoffs with 25% tax increase
About the tax increase
Here's how taxes would change for a house with an assessed value of $14,000:
Old tax rate: 34.75 mills
New tax rate: 43.50 mills
Current tax bill: $486.50
New tax bill: $609
Tax increase: $122.50
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By Liz Hayes
Published: Tuesday, January 1, 2013, 12:01 a.m.
Updated: Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Arnold officials beat Congress by approving a 2013 budget on Monday, but the city still lingers near the edge of its own fiscal cliff.
Council unanimously passed a $4.5 million spending plan that hikes property taxes by 25 percent.
That takes Arnold to the maximum tax increase allowed without court approval.
City residents will pay 43.50 mills in property taxes this year, up from 34.75 mills last year.
The 8.75-mill increase is expected to raise an additional $225,000 in tax revenue.
Mayor Larry Milito said even with the substantial tax increase, the city isn't on firm financial ground.
“We're in an extreme financial bind,” Milito said. “That's the only thing we can do to save jobs.”
Milito said he believes they'll be able to prevent laying off any of the city's 10 police officers.
But cutting the public works department and even an administrative employee still is a consideration in the coming months.
“We, at this point, are not letting any police officers go,” Milito said. “The street crew is not out of the woods yet. We may need to make a cut there, as well as on the administration side in city hall.”
Council in January plans to seek bids for contracting out garbage collection, which currently is handled by city employees. If an outside company assumes those duties, the city could save money on insurance and maintenance costs as well as sell some equipment.
Milito said the loss of garbage collection duties could help justify the elimination of a public works employee on top of the three vacant positions he doesn't believe will be filled.
Milito said officials may consider laying off one of the four city hall employees as well.
He suspects they'll continue to use three additional part-time workers; they are former employees who retired a year ago but were hired on a part-time basis as contract workers for $10,000 each per year and no benefits.
Resident Dante Moretti said he understood the need for increased taxes this year, but he was concerned council would continue to raise taxes in the future.
“I really think this is going to extremes,” Moretti said.
Councilman Dave Horvat, who oversees finances, assured Moretti that council does not intend to hike taxes every year.
“We'll do anything we can to keep costs down,” he said.
Milito has said council already cut about $100,000 in expenses. On paper, 2013 expenses were reduced by about $600,000, but that is due largely to the lack of payments on a 2013 tax-anticipation loan because the city does not plan to assume one this year.
Council still must repay the $750,000 loan from 2012; they are making arrangements with First National Bank to restructure their payment plan.
The city will be starting the year with about a $430,000 deficit until the sewage and garbage fees from the last quarter of 2012, which are due early this year, are collected.
Resident Keith Bertetto said he at least was thankful officials don't plan to eliminate any police officers.
Milito said the city should be able to muddle through this year, but more changes will be needed to keep Arnold solvent for the long term.
“We'll be OK through 2013,” Milito said. “But we'll still look for more cuts.”
Liz Hayes is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-226-4680 or lhayes@tribweb.com.
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Johnny, Johnny!!! Agree with the rentals and low incomers in Arnold, but I don't know of any school board members that get a paycheck other than maybe in the city of Pittsburgh! usually a free Kennywood ticket or 2 is what they get my friend! Consolidation of Arnold and New Kensington is only a matter of time along with Upper Burrell and Lower burrell!
Submitted by: John on Tuesday, January 1, 2013
The only thing that do is create an exodus of your high end property owners (what little that is left vs all of the lower end owners and/or renters) out of the city. Taxing people out the wazoo is not the answer. Consolidation is the answer. When I lived in Florida the county ran the schools, police, fire departments and road crews. Up here in the "commy"wealth state, everyone has to have their fingers in the pie meaning we are paying a dozen or more entities (or people) where we can be paying only one. Lets use the schools for example: In Allegheny county there is at least 50 districts each with 10 (again example, not actual figures) school board members (who most of these members have ZERO higher education and really not qualified to run a kindergarten class let alone an entire district). Each member is earning $25 K per year * 500 members = $12.5 million dollars a year going into salaries instead of education. Imagine how much money we could save by consolidating the police, fire and road services and eliminating the need for small town politicians raising your taxes up the wazoo.
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