{"id":6187,"date":"2013-06-25T08:53:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T12:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=6187"},"modified":"2013-06-25T08:53:45","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T12:53:45","slug":"city-to-take-1-4-million-from-trust-fund-to-cover-2013-expenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=6187","title":{"rendered":"City to take $1.4 million from trust fund to cover 2013 expenses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Withdraw of money will prevent tax hike but is only a stopgap solution<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"CoatesvilleLogo\"<\/a>COATESVILLE \u2013 The City Council reversed itself and voted in favor of borrowing $1.4 million from a trust fund in order to cover various city expenses for the rest of the year at its meeting, Monday night.<\/p>\n

City Council voted against borrowing the money earlier in the month, but the absence of two members and the remaining members being split left the decision at 3-2. Council voted again this week with council voting 4-3 to borrow the money. Per regulation, the issue needed this four-vote majority in order to become finalized.<\/p>\n

After much discussion at both meetings, Council was still split, with some members seeing the withdrawl of the money as necessary, while others wanted to look for alternate ways to cover city costs and use the trust fund money on commercial projects that could bring more income to Coatesville.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was understood way back when that at some point in time, money would be asked for,\u201d City Manager Kirby Hudson said, referring to the December meeting in which they voted on the city\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

City Council President David Collins said that they understood that while drafting the 2013 budget, they understood that the city would not be able to pay for the year\u2019s expenses and borrowing from the trust fund was their contingency plan all along.<\/p>\n

Council Member Jarrell Brazzle voiced his concern that they were heading down a slippery slope of borrowing trust fund money until none is left.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen is, every year, we\u2019re going to ask for more money,\u201d he commented. \u201cWhere do we stop? Where do we say \u2018no more\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

Council members also discussed the possibility of raising taxes to cover city costs but some members were opposed to doing so without residents seeing any immediate benefits.<\/p>\n

President Collins said that in order to prevent further borrowing or raising taxes, the city will have to find ways to generate revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have got to be more than just two alternatives out there. So that\u2019s left up for the administration to come up with that,\u201d he stated. \u201cI don\u2019t want to put the administration in a box by throwing out an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hudson clarified that the expenses in question were costs of running the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has nothing to do with frivolous expenses by the administration,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery year, tar, salt, street light costs go up.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another contested decision, council members voted 3-3 on whether or not to defer payments to a $7 million loan given to the city\u2019s Redevelopment Authority from the city.<\/p>\n

The Redevelopment Authority, responsible for various projects around the city, such as renovating the train station and the potential velodrome was adversely affected by the economic downturn and therefore cannot afford to repay the city for the money borrowed.<\/p>\n

If the city decides not to allow deferment, they could claim the Authority\u2019s property and sell it, but that runs the risk of not gaining back the full amount of the loan. Also, because the RDA is not technically run by the city, it is able to develop projects that the city would not be able to work on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Withdraw of money will prevent tax hike but is only a stopgap solution COATESVILLE \u2013 The City Council reversed itself and voted in favor of borrowing $1.4 million from a trust fund in order to cover various city expenses for the rest of the year at its meeting, Monday night. City Council voted against borrowing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,126,24,2396,52,2311],"class_list":["post-6187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-budget","tag-city-council","tag-coatesville","tag-redevelopment-authority","tag-taxes","tag-trust-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}