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First Posted: 1/28/2014 Without unanimous agreement and after nearly four hours of heated debate, Luzerne County Council voted Tuesday to keep using elected tax collectors, confirm two new division heads and advance eight proposed tax-hike-reduction budget amendments to a public hearing.
Council also approved a Keystone Opportunity Zone tax-break extension for Texas-based developer Trammell Crow Co. to build a distribution center that could employ 800 in the Hanover Industrial Estates in Hanover Township and new collective bargaining agreements with union workers in Children and Youth, Aging and Mental Health.
The 69 elected collectors had received $3.50 for both paid and unpaid county tax bills. A council majority agreed to cancel a switch to in-house collection because tax collectors will accept reduced pay and drop a court appeal over their elimination.
The elected collectors will now receive $2 for each paid county tax bill and nothing for unpaid bills in 2014 and 2015, with the payment for paid bills increasing to $2.50 in the final two years of their four-year terms.
The reduced pay will allow the county to keep the proven service provided by elected collectors without jeopardizing the $240,000 savings included in the 2014 budget from in-house collection, said council members who supported the move &#8212; Kathy Dobash, Eileen Sorokas, Rick Morelli, Stephen A. Urban, Stephen J. Urban and Edward Brominski.
Some of the opposing council members portrayed the return to elected collectors as a step back.
Councilman Jim Bobeck said the settlement locks the county into four more years of using elected collectors, while the in-house plan would have allowed the county to outsource collection if the Treasurer&#8217;s Office didn&#8217;t fulfill its pledge to more efficiently handle the service.
Councilman Rick Williams said home rule was intended to modernize operations and he described the elected collector system as &#8220;archaic.&#8221; Williams said he spoke to an acquaintance who supported keeping elected collectors, and he asked him why. The man said his elected collector allowed him to pay a reduced real estate tax payment after the discount deadline for prompt payments had passed.
The county also would have immediate access to tax payments with in-house collection, he said.
County Manager Robert Lawton&#8217;s nominees for two division heads were approved by a majority &#8212; Western Pennsylvania resident David Schwille for the human services post and Brian Swetz, of Swoyersville, as budget/finance division head.
Schwille will be paid $87,000, and Swetz will receive $85,000.
Eight 2014 budget amendments also received at least four council votes required to advance to a public hearing.
Dobash suggests erasing the 8-percent increase by reducing each division&#8217;s expenses by 8 percent. Her alternate plan: 5-percent cuts in each division to reduce the tax hike by 5 percent.
Lawton estimated at least 100 employees would have to be furloughed under her proposals because he can&#8217;t reduce debt repayments, pension fund contributions and other fixed expenses.
Council Vice Chairman Edward Brominski proposed five changes, including an early-retirement incentive and inclusion of revenue from selling the former county-owned Valley Crest Nursing Home in Plains Township, that combined would reduce the tax hike to less than 2 percent.
Councilman Stephen J. Urban&#8217;s amendment would cancel the entire hike by cutting staff and other expenses and increasing revenue by factoring in more probation fees/fines and employee health care reimbursement.
Six of 11 council votes would be required before Feb. 15 for an amendment to take effect.
Brominski&#8217;s proposal included reducing the county contribution to the Luzerne County Transportation Authority &#8212; prompting several authority employees to attend Tuesday&#8217;s meeting to warn the cut would force the authority to close its doors. The authority provides public bus service and vans for the elderly and disabled.
An authority bus driver told council many residents would have no affordable means to get to minimum-wage jobs and medical appointments without the transportation services.
Bobeck questioned the need to &#8220;put fear in people&#8221; by keeping the transportation cuts on the table. Dobash, Stephen A. Urban and Brominski said the matter is worthy of more discussion because they haven&#8217;t received written documentation on what the county is required to pay to match state funds granted to the authority.

County will return to elected tax collectors