Marshall holds 35-year real estate tax line

Marshall enters its 35th straight year without a real estate tax increase, with the rate of 1.42 mills remaining among the lowest in Allegheny County.

The township’s 2024 budget, as approved unanimously by supervisors in December, calls for $9.836 million in expenditures, a slight increase over last year’s $9.358 million.

For every tax dollar spent by Marshall property owners, 75 cents goes to the North Allegheny School District, 18 cents to Allegheny County and 6 cents to the township, according to the budget document.

Noted township expenditures include $1.28 million on roadway resurfacing and $248,000 in traffic signal upgrades. Township manager Julie Bastianini said paving expenditures are consistent with other years.

“The township historically has spent around this amount on paving,” she said. “The 2024 paving number is slightly higher to include parking lot paving at the municipal building and public works garage.”

Marshall is budgeting $1.7 million for the Northern Regional Police Department, an increase of 9.34% this year, Bastianini said.

NRPD Chief John Sicilia said costs, namely in technology, have increased.

“There’s not really any big changes in 2024 (budget). Everything in police work is going up, like everything else in the country,” he said.

His department covers Marshall, Bradford Woods, Pine and Richland, plus Seven Fields in Butler County as of Dec. 11. The Seven Fields police department entered in a four-year contract with Northern Regional at a cost to the borough of $650,000 per year, Sicilia said.

Other public safety funding in Marshall’s budget includes $387,000 for the Marshall Township Volunteer Fire Department, which constitutes .21 mills of real estate tax. This contribution helps support the operation of the department, with an additional $20,000 to support recruitment and retention efforts, Bastianini said.

Marshall budgeted a one-time contribution of $40,000 in the 2024 budget toward the nonprofit McCandless Franklin Park Ambulance Authority, she said.

Other contributions include $248,946 to Northland Public Library, compared to $220,071 in the 2023 budget. Benefits for Marshall employees increased from last year’s $787,809 to more than $865,000 for this year.

Residential construction continues to add new properties to the Marshall’s rolls, per the budget. In 2023, the township issued permits for 75 new single-family homes and 3 townhome buildings, or 15 units, as of Nov. 7.

That represents more than three times the amount of building permits compared to 2022, with 21 issued that year. And it’s the second-highest since the 84 in 1999, as listed in the budget. Since then, permits have been fewer than 50, aside from 2015, when there were 54.

There hasn’t been anything new in Marshall that would lead to increases in building permit requests, Bastianini said.

“Many of the subdivisions now under construction have gone through the planning process over the past several years, and there was a confluence of building activities in 2023”, she said.

Several residential subdivisions are under construction in Marshall. In 2023, the township saw building permits for homes in the Spring Way, Markman Place and Sonoma Heights subdivisions. Townhome construction occurred in the Freeport Greene and Marshall Trails North subdivsions, according to Bastianini.

The 2024 budget is available at www.twp.marshall.pa.us.