SHENANGO VALLEY Panel won't suggest merger

The panel's model municipality won't work financially.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- There will be no recommendation for a consolidation of any municipalities by the Shenango Valley Intergovernmental Study Committee.
In fact, the committee, which has been studying the feasibility of a consolidation or merger of five municipalities for the past four years, won't make any recommendations at all.
The committee basically wrapped up its work Thursday, saying that it tried to come up with a consolidation model but it didn't work.
The bottom line is the cost would be too great.
"Under the analysis we have now, we could not recommend consolidation," said Alan Kugler, the consultant directing the committee's work.
What it would involve
Consolidation, in this case, would involve the municipalities of Hermitage, Sharon, Farrell, Sharpsville and Wheatland to join together to form a new municipality of about 44,000 people.
"We don't have a workable government structure," said Robert Jazwinski of Hermitage, chairman of the subcommittee that tried to put together a financial package for the model.
"We worked for four years and we don't have something that will work," he said.
The model provided that no one employed in any of the municipalities would lose their jobs and no services would be reduced.
The bottom line showed that the cost of the new government would be about $2.5 million more than it would collect in revenues under an equitable tax system based on the city of Hermitage's 5-mill property tax and 1.75-percent wage tax, Jazwinski said.
However, even that scenario required the imposition of a fire fee to be charged to residents, generating $1.8 million in revenue.
Fire service
The model showed that each of the five municipalities would keep its fire service. In Sharon, that's a fully paid department, while the other municipalities have either all volunteers or a mixture of some paid and mostly volunteer firefighters.
Those living in the Sharon portion of the new municipality would pay a higher fire fee than those served by volunteers.
But Thomas Lally of Sharpsville, chairman of the fire subcommittee, said his committee was given a legal opinion that fire fees are illegal and can't be imposed.
Lally made a motion directing that the committee make absolutely no recommendations with the final report on its work, leaving the issue up to the individual municipal councils and citizens to pursue, if they wish to do so.
His motion passed 13-3.
Mayor William Morocco of Farrell was one of the dissenters.
"I think that displays a total lack of leadership," he said, insisting that the committee make some recommendations.
Motions passed
Jazwinski made three motions, all of which passed unanimously.
The first calls for the committee to ask each of the five municipalities to accept Consumer Pennsylvania Water Co.'s proposal to do a privatization study on the municipal sewer systems that could lead to reduced government cost.
The second calls on the committee to finalize its report and disseminate it to the public.
The third asks the study committee's coordinating committee to develop a structure to look at further cooperation and combined service ideas.
About 60 people crowded into the Hermitage commissioners' chamber to attend the meeting, most appearing to oppose consolidation, but some favoring it.
One man said he came in against the idea but, after hearing the review of the committee's draft report showing how the Shenango Valley is deteriorating, changed his mind.
"It's all about the future. The Valley's dying," Gregg Buchanan of Hermitage told the committee.
The study shows that, he said. The population is aging and there are no jobs for young people.
"We're not doing anything for the future," he said.
Jim Bralski of Hermitage, a longtime opponent of consolidation, said the report offered no tangible proof to convince citizens to support the idea.
Final meeting
The committee will meet one more time Nov. 13 to vote on a final version of its report and then hand it over to the five municipal governments and release it to the public.
Although there's no recommendation for consolidation, the individual municipal governments could still decide to put the question on the ballot for the voters to decide.
Citizens could also force the issue onto the ballot through initiative and referendum, if there were sufficient community support to back the effort.
gwin@vindy.com