Fawn passes 2021 budget, no tax increase

Fawn Supervisors adopted a $1.9 million budget for 2021 that includes no increase in property taxes.

The township hasn’t raised property taxes in at least 24 years. The budget keeps the tax rate at 3.04 mills.

“We’re pretty prudent on our expenses,” Supervisors Chairman David Montanari said. “We don’t have a large tax base. We don’t have a lot of business. It’s a bedroom community. We anticipate expenses the best we can.”

The total overall spending plan is slightly less than what was budgeted for this year.

The township budgeted a little over $1.9 million for 2020 and a little under $1.9 million for 2021. It’s a roughly $28,000 decrease in spending.

Montanari said a reason for the spending decrease is because the township fired police officer Keith Lazaron II for alleged willful misconduct in November. Lazaron has denied any wrongdoing and leveled his own allegations against township officials in a pending federal lawsuit.

“That’s an unfortunate situation. We had some realignment with the police department. We had a full-time officer that we terminated,” Montanari said. “That savings is in labor for the police department.”

The largest expenditures, Montanari said, are $300,000 for milling and paving work on Sun Mine Road, and $83,000 for a dump truck for the public works department.

“We’re doing a full-depth reclamation that brings it up to PennDOT standards,” Montanari said of Sun Mine Road.

Also included in next year’s budget is a 7% pay bump for police Chief Tim Mayberry, who will see his salary go from $59,446 this year to $63,606 next year.

Full-time and part-time officer salaries will remain roughly the same at $46,600 and $40,000, respectively.

“We’re still budgeted for two full-time officers and a part-time officer,” Montanari said. “They all got a little bit of a (pay) bump. Everybody got $1 an hour.”