About Town - 11/11/18

This week's photos from around Columbia

(Click/tap on photos to see larger, sharper images.)

 Sunday morning river rescue rehearsal

There are more photos of this event later in this post.

 Thataway!

 On the other side

This starling just got hooked up to cable. 

 Digging up the 200 block of Locust

 This is why we can't have nice things.

 No! Not yet! Tis NOT the season.

 Someone called the bug man.

If the problem is with ants, it could be due to unattended trash like this, a few doors up.

Or trash like this a few doors down.

(Hope the garbage doesn't seep downstream.)

 By the way, the firehouse brewery project fell through.

 Nothing to see here.

Or here.

 Fence down!

 Now the vermin can get in - or out?

 Time for this to come down

 Drying off

 Feelin' snarky

 Beginning of a trend?

The spray-painted address - high up - is similar to the format at 121 South 5th.

 Meanwhile, inside the market house

 Meter guys at work

 Moving stuff into Eastern Drillers

 Still more stuff

 Door into the mural?

 They ain't movin' for no one, not even for the lady pulling the cart.

 Your daily warthog

 What's that guy doing up there?

 Maybe checking out this low flier

 UGI was here.

Here's the "before" shot.

 Down at the apartment building project on Bank Avenue

If we end up with another big hole in the ground, council should have to hold its meetings there.

 More mattress madness?

 Don't you just hate when your brake discs and saucepan spill out?

 The codes vehicles are numbered now.

 4

 3

 5 and 1

 On the rise

 This tree grate on Locust is now officially a tripping hazard.

 So's this.

And this as well - on South 2nd.

 Streetlights on in the daytime

 No wonder the electric bill's so high.

 Despite the new lines, truckers still have a hard time negotiating the turn at 5th & Chestnut.

 See?

Anyway, fall has fallen.

 And the leaves have turned.

Some are quite beautiful.

 Some are an obstruction, like this pile on Maple Street that forces walkers further out onto the road along which there's no sidewalk.

 Here are more leaves on South 8th where the street is still being dug up. 

The town has so many leaves, it took three vehicles and five guys to clean them up on Friday, as shown in this submitted photo.

 Falling over

 Out on Grinnell Avenue

 Yep, it froze overnight.

 The borough has known about the issue for quite some time.

 Purportedly, there was a plan to fix the problem - which obviously did not come to fruition.

 At least the animal shelter is coming together.

 Veterans Day 

Never Forget.

 Back down at the river, these guys were practicing in the cold water Sunday morning, as the following photos show.

***************

 Red clouds

 More warthogs - three this time. Usually they fly in pairs.

 Here's a closer shot of two of the three shown above.

 Signpost - no sign

 Backyard sprinkler - for those unexpected grill fires

 True

 Ferals - How many is it this time?

Men at work - one in the hole.

And right here seems like an appropriate place to post this:

Mystery numbers: Tax hike in, pay raises out, property inspector in, hiring out

Four major items came out of the November 7 extra budget meeting for 2019: a new property inspector, a hiring freeze, a freeze on certain raises, and a tax hike.

At the meeting, President Kelly Murphy said council had voted 6-1 at a personnel meeting to hire a full-time property inspector. Murphy said the position will be included in the 2019 budget and "the individual in question will be hired accordingly." The individual in question is assumed to be Jay Frerichs, who believed he had previously been offered the job. As of last week’s meeting, Frerichs was still in limbo; council was not certain it could pay Frerichs' promised $50,000 salary plus benefits due to lack of funds in its general fund account. Somehow, in the interim, however, the money showed up.

Although the sudden availability of funds was not explicitly explained, it presumably came from cuts in funding to organizations, a freeze on hiring and pay raises for department managers - and a proposed 21.2% property tax hike, all of which were announced Wednesday night.  Frerichs' salary was not the only consideration, however. Council also had to meet regular operating expenses for next year. Since many of the numbers at last week's meeting were left uncrunched, the budget and the hiring must have been worked out sometime between the two meetings.

The proposed tax increase will raise millage from the current 6.6 to 8 mills. The increase equates to an additional $140 tax bill on a property with an assessed value of $100,000. Taxes had been at 8 mills for several years until last year’s decrease to 6.6 mills due to the county-wide reassessment. (Taxing entities adjust their millage rates down in proportion to an increase in taxable assessment.) In November 2015, council shot down an opportunity to reduce millage a quarter of a mill, to 7.75. The vote was 4-3 to keep it at 8 mills.

In raising the millage back to 8 mills, Councillor Cleon Berntheizel noted that the borough had not increased taxes in a decade. However, even with last year’s decrease, Columbia’s municipal tax rate has long been among the highest in the county, second only to Lancaster City. Columbia’s current total millage [county (2.911) + municipal (6.6) + school district (25.8163)] is already the highest in the county - at 35.3273 mills - and this latest increase will push the total to 36.7273 mills. A property owner will bear an annual tax burden of $3,672.73 on an assessed value of $100,000, or $306.06 per month.

Councillor John Novak tried softening the blow of the upcoming increase by claiming that Columbia's school tax is currently 88 cents for each dollar of tax, while the county tax is about 3 cents, and the municipal tax will be a mere 8 cents for all municipal services provided.  However, the school tax rate of 25.8163 mills divided by the total millage of 36.7273 is .70; that is, 70 cents for each dollar of tax, not 88 cents. The municipal tax will be 22 cents for each dollar of tax, not 8 cents. [Note: This is different from calculating tax on assessed value, in which 8 mills equals .8 cents per dollar.]

Although millages from the three taxing entities were the only factors used in calculations at the meeting, the borough and the school district also jointly levy a 1% earned income tax, a real estate transfer tax, and a local services tax, formerly known as an occupational privilege tax. In the final analysis, factoring these taxes (which are variable) into the calculations renders any estimate of number of cents on each dollar of tax unreliable. Suffice it to say, Columbia Borough property owners will be paying more in taxes in 2019.


[A link to a .pdf of current county, municipal, and school district millage rates is HERE.]

Norwood Road closed November 12-14

Draft Agenda - Borough Council Meeting, November 12, 2018

The 45-page council packet can be downloaded HERE.