Richland scales back paving to guard against possible pandemic revenue dips

Richland has been able to tack on three additional paving projects for the fall after determining that there is enough money in the budget to cover the nearly $200,000 expense.

But the township is squirreling away more than $280,000 earmarked for the paving program in case the coronavirus wreaks havoc on its budget.

Township supervisors on Sept. 16 awarded the other contracts to Shields Paving, which was the lowest bidder.

One contract is for $133,390 to mill and repave Clendenning Road. The second contract is for $73,484, which included $47,280 to redo Cunningham Road and $26,204 to repave the parking lot at the community park.

“We ratcheted it back in the spring because of uncertainties about the economy caused by the covid pandemic,” manager Dean Bastianini said. “We really didn’t know how it would affect our revenues and we still don’t know the full impact.”

Bastianini said the township does not get its half of the 1% wage tax employers withhold from workers’ paychecks until after the end of each quarter. The other half of the tax goes to the Pine-Richland School District.

As a result, the municipality won’t immediately know about changes in revenue because of pandemic-related job furloughs or other factors.

“By the time it takes this money to find out where it belongs, it could be late October or November,” Bastianini said. “So we set aside $283,000 from the paving budget and are waiting for a possible second shoe to drop, or situation to get worse, in terms of our revenue.”

The manager said it was “prudent” to spend 76.5% of this year’s paving budget because putting the work off could end up costing the township more money.

Municipalities typically try to seek competitive bids for road paving early in the year because after the major paving contractors in the region have booked projects for the season, the prices for work often increase due to demand.

While trimming or delaying road work is an option to guard against potential budget shortfalls, there’s little to cut from the township’s largest expenditure, public safety.

“Public safety, especially the police department, is a 24-hour a day, seven-day-a-week operation, so you really can’t cut back on that,” Bastianini said, noting that about 75% of the public safety budget goes for personnel costs.

The township was able to save about $35,000 by canceling the annual community day celebration, which would have been impossible to hold while following the state-mandated guidelines limiting large gatherings.

Bastianini said the township’s recreation department “took a hit” because people couldn’t rent facilities for their events.

“Most people book the facilities way in advance, so we had to issue a ton of refunds this year,” the manager said. “We anticipated revenue of about $70,000 from facility rentals, but we’re down to $1,072. The money we lost was supposed to cover cleaning and maintenance of the facilities.”