Letter to the Editor: Liquor store privatization would strike blow against middle-class workers

Lottery Numbers for Monday, August 24

PLYMOUTH TWP. &#8212; The Board of Supervisors held a special meeting Monday evening to discuss two pressing issues concerning the township: its impending termination of Act 47 (distressed municipality) status and the financial woes currently plaguing the volunteer fire department.&#8220;We&#8217;ve been under Act 47 for over 10 years and everyone from within the township &#8211; our citizens&#8211; have shouldered this burden and helped us get to where we are now,&#8221; said Supervisor Gail Conrad. &#8220;We are poised to pay off the last of our debt to the tune of $510,000 sometime before the end of the year, a debt amount that we&#8217;ve been paying off for the last decade.&#8221;The news of Plymouth Township&#8217;s Act 47 status termination plan falls on the heels of the news that Nanticoke became the first in Pennsylvania history to finally drop the Act 47 status Monday.&#8220;Plymouth Township has been in recovery for the last decade,&#8221; said Conrad. &#8220;We&#8217;re at a point where after this has passed, some who are paying large amounts of municipal taxes will ideally see a reduction.&#8221;The news of Plymouth Township&#8217;s debt woes finally dwindling was coupled with its volunteer fire service bringing new money troubles into the picture.The Plymouth Township Volunteer Fire Service is currently dealing with a financial shortage and rising upkeep costs and is struggling to keep up with its financial obligations.The Fire Department took out a $600,000 USDA-funded loan, as well as a $50,000 line of credit in 2008 as part of a building project for their current fire station on East Poplar Street in West Nanticoke.&#8220;We took an iconic building within the township and saved it,&#8221; said Fire Chief John Rineheimer. &#8220;However, that building needed rehabilitation and full refurbishment. We had to gut the building floor to ceiling, but it now is the emergency services hub for the entire Plymouth Township community.&#8221;The department&#8217;s debt, in the form of a mortgage payment, runs to the tune of nearly $3,000 a month &#8211; a bill that is simply leaving the department underwater.&#8220;We are all volunteers,&#8221; added Rineheimer. &#8220;The township gives us about $10,000 a year, but that means our entire emergency services operation is on a budget of around $130,000 per year. That simply isn&#8217;t working.&#8221;&#8220;We make our primary funding from the haunted house,&#8221; he added, referencing the area&#8217;s acclaimed Halloween attraction &#8220;Horror Hall.&#8221; &#8220;We used to have bingo, however, when the casino came in around 2009, we stopped running it simply because we were running at a loss.&#8221;While the fire department has been paying its bills on time, save for three months in the summer of 2014 in which they approached the township for assistance, the issue of making ends meet is one that isn&#8217;t going to disappear.&#8220;We as a township are obligated to provide fire protection for our citizens,&#8221; reiterated Conrad.The township is faced with difficult decisions such as taking on some more debt on the behalf of the department or folding the volunteer service and outsourcing protection to neighboring communities.The thought of closing the Tilbury Volunteer Station was met with much disdain from the crowd present, however.<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By Rachel HollyFor Times Leader</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>The Times Leader newsroom may be reached at 570-829-7242 or on Twitter @TLnews.</shirttailMeta></div>

Plymouth Township about to leave distressed status, faces fire department woes