Bristol Township Council voted 5-0 to approve the 2014 budget with no tax increases for residents for a third straight year on Thursday night.
Bristol residents also will see a $20 reduction in trash costs next year due to the new once-per-week trash collection agreement with Waste Management Inc, as previously reported.
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The budget, however, does includes a 5 percent increase for Bristol Township Water & Sewer Department customers due to the continued development of the township’s waste water treatment plant. Residents living outside of Levittown sections will see their rates jump from $96.13 to $100.13 per quarter. The Levittown sections are covered by the Lower Bucks County Joint Municipal Sewer Authority.
The little more than $48 million budget will keep the tax millage rate at 23.9875 mills. Property owners with the average value assessed at $17,877 will continue to pay nearly $429 in municipal property taxes.
The .5 percent earned income tax and street lights charges remain unchanged.
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The budget has about 80 percent of the general fund going to pay the community’s 114 full- and part-time employees. Due to attrition, that number is down five full-time members from 2013.
The township is being strangled with about $92 million in unfunded liabilities, officials said. This includes $81 million for the employee pension plan; $7 million for the police pension trust fund; and nearly $3.2 million in unused time off, officials said.
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Township Manager Bill McCauley has said previously that unfunded liabilities are a weight on the township’s financial health.
”[The budget] is a mixed bag. It’s doing well in the places we can control,” McCauley said when he presented the budget earlier this month.
Highlights of the 2014 budget are below:
- Four million dollars will be spent to pave 24 miles of roads. The money comes through funds borrowed from the Delaware Valley Regional Finance Authority. In the past two years, 44 miles of the township’s 177 miles of roadways were paved through the project.
- The budget includes nearly $7 million in capital projects. Approximately $2 million will be spend to renovate the municipal building. The remainder will go toward improvements to the public works facility in Croydon, public works equipment, three new police vehicles, saving for a new fire truck and the installation of lights at the township-owned ball fields on Bath Road.
- Grant money totaling $677,000 from the Bucks County Redevelopment Authority that will go toward the completion of LED streetlight upgrades. The project will be the first for a municipality in the state and will pay for itself in less than five years, officials have said.
- A redevelopment authority totaling $277,000 to fund a new radio system for the township’s first responders. The funds will cover the first portion of a seven-year payment plan to pay off the system.
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Councilman Rich Pluta abstained from voting on the budget.
