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Palmyra Borough Council continued last week’s meeting with an extra hour of budget talks on Nov. 18.
They started last meeting with a budget shortfall of $819,000. With council’s suggestions and input from Western Lebanon County Regional Police Chief Andrew Winters, the borough is now expecting to be $601,866 short.
Borough manager Roger Powl said Palmyra is experiencing revenue problems.
“The revenue that we are seeing coming into this point isn’t consistent with what we’ve gotten in the couple years past,” he said. “It’s a little less than we’ve seen, so I’m not sure what’s going on.”
He said in some previous years, the borough had a sudden “nice blast” of property tax revenue toward the end of the year, but they could not craft the budget by counting on the additional funds.
Read More: Palmyra Council tries to cut down on $819,000 budget shortfall, mayor retires
The current millage rate, a multiplier attached to the value of a property used to calculate the local property taxes, is 4.11. It will increase by 1.19 to a new rate of 5.3 because of the $601,000 shortfall.
For the average home value in Palmyra of $182,082, this would be an additional $216.68 per year or an additional $18.05 per month.
Council members said they were reluctant to raise taxes, especially with rising costs throughout the economy, but they said they didn’t see much more in the budget they could cut that would close the gap.
Council told Powl to continue to put the preliminary budget together with their feedback. They need to vote to publicly advertise the budget at the next meeting.
The final budget will be approved during one of the council’s December meetings and will take effect in January.
Palmyra Borough Council will meet next at 325 S. Railroad St. on Nov. 26 at 7 p.m. Meetings are also streamed on the Palmyra Borough, Lebanon County Pennsylvania YouTube page.
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