HONESDALE, PA — Less than two months into 2017, Honesdale faces the prospect of a budgetary shortfall as well as unforeseen consequences from recent borough council action.

Finance chair Mike Dux, during his committee report at the February 20 meeting of the Honesdale Borough Council, said that Wayne Memorial Hospital (WMH) has indicated it may not begin a planned $35 million expansion in 2017 after all.

John Conte, director of real estate and facility services at WMH, confirmed this by phone on February 21. Saying that pending regulatory and financial approvals might come too late for a fall construction start, he added that the hospital still hopes to begin expansion in 2017.

Delay of that project will wreak havoc with the borough’s 2017 budget, prepared in anticipation of almost a half million dollars in revenue from requisite permit and engineering review fees. Even if the expansion took place, not all of the $433,000 revenue would be available for application to borough expenses. The council expected to use about half, which means that it now faces a $222,250 gap between borough revenue and expenses.

“Once a budget has been approved, the bottom line can’t be changed,” borough secretary-manager Judy Poltanis told the council. “But funds can be reallocated from one line to another.”

With an eye to eliminating intentional 2017 expenditures, the council charged its finance committee and all borough department heads with keen scrutiny of projects and purchases, such as purchase of a police department license-plate reader and repair of the Fifth Street Bridge.

The $15,000 plate reader became necessary when, as of December 31, 2016, Pennsylvania stopped issuing vehicle registration stickers. The reader, located in all police cruisers, scans license plates on vehicles in front of and behind the police cruiser, connects with a central law enforcement database, and returns a record of arrests and prosecutions (“rap sheet”) for drivers of those vehicles. “The borough may not have the option of postponing the plate reader purchase until next year,” said borough council president Mike Augello in private remarks after the meeting. “If the state mandates its use in all police vehicles, we’ll have to purchase now.”

Postponing Fifth Street Bridge repair would save the borough approximately $35,000. But even if both plate reader purchase and bridge repair are put on hold, the $50,000 savings would fall far short of the $200,000-plus needed to compensate for hospital expansion revenue. So the council is considering imposition of a cable television tariff. Noting that it is somewhat inequitable, targeting cable companies but not satellite or Internet providers, Augello said the tax would derive from a franchise agreement with Blue Ridge Cable, which would then pass the cost on to consumers. The public is invited to comment on this proposal during the citizen input segment of the March 6 council meeting.

An unintended consequence of the February 6 approval of a new borough employee handbook came to light with a request by Poltanis for some long-overdue vacation days. The handbook contains a “use it or lose it” policy for employee vacation time. With 28 years’ service to the borough, Poltanis accrues vacation time at a rate of 37 days per year. But because she has been a one-person department since 2011, vacations have been deferred every year.

Not the only longtime employee to be affected, Poltanis requested a waiver, saying it would be impossible to take all her accrued vacation time in 2017. The council approved more than four weeks’ vacation for her in 2017, and asked Poltanis to submit a formal request for waiver of the rest.