Lower Gwynedd Township. Photo by James Short.
Supers also removed the assessment rates for two districts' streetlights in the action.
The Lower Gwynedd Board of Supervisors announced that there will be no tax rate increase in the township for 2025.
During its Dec. 10 public meeting, the Lower Gwynedd supervisors reviewed its preliminary budget and fiscal plan for 2025 for its final time. It can be viewed in its entirety online here. There were no additional questions or comments from the board, nor from the public.
The budget was provided at the Nov. 12 meeting, and all involved parties (the public included) have had nearly a month to review the documents and proposed resolutions.
The rate of 1.223 mills will remain unchanged from the previous year. This results in the Lower Gwynedd tax owed for median assessed home value of $242.
There were no comments from the public during the review period.
Only one issue was addressed in a memo from Township Manager Mimi Gleason and Melidna Haldeman, the township’s finance director, when it came to the adoption of the new year’s budget.
“The staff recommends removing assessments from two of the street light districts,” said the memo. “The streetlights in the districts included in this resolutions [the budget] were approved as part of subdivision plans and are decorative, and therefore it is understandable why property owners in those neighborhoods are assessed the cost of maintaining those lights.”
In contrast, according to the memo, the township staff has reviewed that the streetlights in the Pen-Ambler and Penllyn districts are different. The memo said that these “cobra head” streetlights are not just decorative but are for vehicular safety.
“Those assessments have been charged at least as far back as 1986, but staff could not find any records prior to that year, indicating how or why property owners who live near those lights were assessed for them.”
To correct the issue, the staff recommended that assessment be removed, which, as part of the budget approval, the board agreed with, passing the resolution (and 2025 budget) unanimously.
