UPPER POTTSGROVE — Township commissioners voted unanimously Monday night to advertise a $4.4 million budget for 2025 that calls for a tax hike of 3.75 percent.
If adopted unchanged next month, the tax rate will go from the current 4 mills to 4.15 mills. According to Township Manager Michelle Reddick, a home assessed at $100,000 would see a $75 to the annual tax bill as a result of the change.
Commissioners Chairman Trace Slinkerd the tax hike is needed to close a structural deficit of more than $300,000.
But the Upper Pottsgrove Township budget is not the only budget with a deficit.
Also struggling to close a deficit is the Pottstown Regional Public Library of which Upper Pottsgrove is technically a partner, but lately, a non-participating one.For at least the last three years, Upper Pottsgrove has made no contribution, unlike Lower Pottsgrove, West Pottsgrove townships and the Borough of Pottstown, which all make contributions toward library costs.
Township commissioners heard once again Monday from Angela Brown, the executive director of the library, about the township’s repeated failure to make any contribution to the library.
Brown was first stopped from presenting after Slinkerd asked her is she was a resident of Upper Pottstosgrove Township, which the commissioners require for anyone making public comment. She is not.
However, Slinkerd said he would let her “present” for two minutes, “but you need to follow the procedures everybody else does. If you want to coordinate with Michelle, please do that.”
Brown said she had never received “any response to any of my emails” to Township Manager Michelle Reddick. “I got no response to my emails to you,” she told Reddick.
“Did you request to present at a meeting?” Reddick asked Brown. She said no.
Later in the evening, Reddick said she was “quite offended” at Brown’s remarks about emails because she had received two, one involving information for an article that had already been published, and another asking to post a community survey in the township website, which she did. “I didn’t see a need to respond to either of those emails. The first time I met her was when she showed up at our meeting unannounced.”
Apparently, the commissioners did not feel the need to respond to Brown either. Brown shared an email with The Mercury that she sent to all five commissioners on Oct. 31, alerting them to the library’s budget problems, caused, in part, by the township’s failure to pay its share.
“The relationship between the Pottstown Regional Public Library, Board of the Commissioners and the residents of Upper Pottsgrove is very important to the community. Over the years the Upper Pottsgrove financial responsibility to the library has been eliminated from the township budget,” Brown wrote. “As a result of the lack of reliable funding and the rising cost of operations for the library, the Board of Directors have determined we can no longer meet our own standards of operation and are currently facing a budgetary shortfall that risks the imminent closure of the library if not addressed immediately,” the email said, ending with “Thank You for your time and consideration in restoring our funding.”
“I sent this email to all of the commissioners and received no response or comment from any of the commissioners,” Brown told The Mercury Monday evening.
“We are currently going to be closing eight hours of our service time, the the reason is financial instability. We are also cutting our janitorial services and bookkeeping services by 50 percent. We are also going to be reducing our staff as a result of our financial difficulties,” Brown told the commissioners Monday.
The library’s service area, she said, is Pottstown Borough, Lower Pottsgrove, West Pottsgrove and Upper Pottsgrove. “The patrons of Upper Pottsgrove have used this library, as of Oct. 31, 5,992 times which is 7.1 percent of our patrons. The patrons of this service area have saved, over $1 million. We are asking Upper Pottsgrove to reinstate its funding for our shortfall,” Brown said.
The state recommends a contribution of $5 per person, and the latest Census numbers would put Upper Pottsgrove’s contribution at about $31,000.
The commissioners also heard from resident Cathy Sikorski, who told the commissioners that the township “should pay our fair share.”
There was no public response to either speaker.
