Assembly changes service area fee structure

PALMER — In the middle of the borough budget debate emerged a change to the way road service areas allocate their funds.

Until this coming fiscal year, each road service area paid for borough administrative costs through a formula based solely on how many road miles the service area contains.

Assemblyman Tom Kluberton, who represents the Valley’s northernmost reaches, argued for a change. In road service areas with a lot of road miles and not a lot of income, the road service area’s funds are just enough to pay administration costs and do maintenance work — mostly snow removal and grading.

Other, more crowded areas, can afford to do capital improvements such as repair, pave or upgrade existing roads or build new ones.

His change, which eventually passed 5-2 with Ewing and Bettine opposing, would have 65 percent of each road service area’s contribution based on the amount of money it spends on maintenance and 35 percent based on the amount of money it spends on capital improvements.

Kluberton said he’s been trying to pass this change for three years. This year he was mostly concerned with Caswell Lakes, where the road service area mill rate of 4.46 is added to a recently passed fire service area mill rate of 3 percent.

“I’m less interested in seeing Caswell Lakes emerge victorious,” than he is in making the system more equitable, Kluberton said.

Although some would see their payments to the borough increase, Kluberton pointed out that, under the new plan, no service area would have to raise its mill rate. But he could, and did, decrease Caswell’s tax rate by .35 mills.

While none of his colleagues really opposed the change, a number of them did ask for more time and input from the service areas’ boards of supervisors.

“I haven’t seen a road service area that wants to increase their contributions to this fund,” Kluberton said.

Before the measure passed, Kluberton called on assembly members to walk into service area board meetings and tell the board members, “We had to do what was fair and equitable.”