SHARON City budget remains in limbo

Council must pass a budget by Dec. 31 or city operations will grind to a halt.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- City council is ready to enact a 3.5-mill property tax increase for next year, but it can't agree on how that money should be spent.
On Thursday, council passed the first of two required readings of an ordinance raising property taxes to fund a $7,960,708 general fund budget, but failed to pass the budget itself.
The tax increase will cost the average homeowner about $44 more next year. The vote was 3-2, with Lou Rotunno and Fred Hoffman opposed.
Dissenters: Hoffman said the increase wasn't large enough, pointing out that Sharon is carrying between $300,000 and $400,000 in unpaid 2001 bills that will have to be paid out of 2002 funds. That eats up the entire tax increase, which was needed for employee pay raises and other things, he said.
The city also owes its wage tax office about $1.1 million it borrowed over the past seven years to keep the city afloat financially, and there are no provisions to pay any of that money back next year, Hoffman said.
The money comes from an account holding wage taxes collected from local employers of out-of-state residents.
Rotunno said he thinks that cuts and adjustments could have been made within the budget to avoid any tax increase.
Budget vote: The vote on the budget showed only Councilman Raymond Fabian voting for the spending plan. Rotunno, Hoffman, George Gulla and Chris Outrakis cast dissenting votes.
Gulla and Outrakis said the budget doesn't allocate funds for Mayor-elect David O. Ryan to hire an executive secretary, something every mayor for the past 40 years has had.
The person holding that post resigned early this year, and Mayor Robert T. Price paid two other secretaries an additional $4,000 each to cover those duties for the rest of the year.
Position change: Rotunno, Hoffman and Fabian refused to allot money to fill it on a full-time basis, although they did propose transferring the city clerk's salary of $26,480 into that line item, a move that would force Ryan to either use the city clerk as his executive secretary or fire her and hire someone else to do both jobs.
Ryan objected to what he said was council's attempt to tell him whom he could hire, accusing council of appointing his secretary and getting rid of the city clerk.
Hoffman said the city clerk, a council employee, spends only two-fifths of her time on council business and has been spending the rest of her time working for the police department.
This change would put her in the mayor's office as a secretary on a full-time basis, and council would keep the $5,300 allotted for the city clerk to have other city secretaries cover those duties part time.
However, without a budget in place, nothing will happen and city operations will grind to a halt Jan. 1 because there will be no authority to pay police, firefighters and other employees.
Meeting extension: Council agreed to meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday in hopes of getting a first reading of the budget passed.
The document must then be on display for 10 days and pass a second reading, tentatively set for Dec. 28.
Council did pass first reading of an ordinance giving it more control over city spending by limiting the mayor and finance director to spending only one-fourth of the budget in each quarter of 2002.
Before any expenditure can exceed that limit, council will have to approve.