Proposed Mt. Lebanon budget calls for no property tax increase
The key figure in the Mt. Lebanon manager’s proposed budget for 2018 is 4.71 mills, meaning that if all goes as anticipated, the property tax rate remains the same.
“We do a very good job here across the board of budgeting only for needs and staying within the budgets the commission approves,” municipal manager Keith McGill said. “That’s a credit to all of the senior staff here, because everybody pays attention to those numbers.”
With spending for next year listed at $37.188 million, the budget also calls for no changes in earned income and real estate transfer tax rates, and municipal sanitary and stormwater fees.
“There are always those unanticipated expenditures, but we position ourselves to be able to absorb the majority of those as they occur,” McGill said.
The municipality also is in position to continue to make financial investments in Mt. Lebanon’s future, as he points out in his budget message. Chief among them are an overhaul of the public works facility and accompanying construction of a new firing range on the property of the municipal golf course.
“That gives us the ability to potentially pull the school district in as a partner in the project, which benefits both the municipality and the school district, so we’re not spending money to create two facilities,” McGill explained.
Approval of both projects could occur by year’s end.
“We’re going to create some operational efficiencies,” McGill said about the public works property, which is accessed from Lindale Drive, just off Cedar Boulevard. “We’re going to add some outbuildings so that we’re not letting equipment sit out in the elements, and we’re extending the life of those very expensive pieces of equipment.”
The municipality also continues to invest in planning for an updated state Department Environmental Protecting consent order setting required stormwater flow targets, along with the possible implementation of future standards for reducing pollution in stormwater discharges.
“That was one of the principal drivers for us to put the stormwater fee in place in 2011,” McGill explained, noting that with its collection, “We’ve been able to mitigate and really minimalize a lot of the impacts we previously had when we’d get a heavy storm. We still have areas that need to be addressed, but we’re making good progress toward that.”
Regarding municipal personnel, the 2018 budget calls for an additional full-time employee for the information technology department, which McGill said would be offset by eliminations of full-time positions in two other departments.
“The demands on this office continue to grow with changes in technology, the addition of new and better software, cybersecurity demands, building security and a multitude of other issues,” McGill wrote in his budget message.
According to figures he presented, $45,000 is earmarked toward deer management next year.
“It’s a continuation of the deer management program we’ve had in place,” he said. “We are starting to actually see a downward trend in both dead deer pickups and our deer-vehicular collisions.”
The cumulative total for the latter shows 67 collisions through the end of October, compared with 89 during the first 10 months of last year. Also through October, 52 deer have been retrieved from the sides of roads, down from 66 in the same period in 2016 and 96 in 2015.
Mt. Lebanon Commission will continue open-discussion budget workshop sessions at 6 p.m. Nov. 20 and 29. Portions of the meetings could be in executive session to discuss personnel matters related to compensation.
On Dec. 12, the commission will hold a public meeting on the proposed adjustments to the manager’s recommended budget and vote on the final 2018 budget document.