At the October 13 Lancaster City Council Meeting, Matt Holden, a candidate for City Council, denounced the City’s loss of the police contract with Lancaster Township. Holden, who is listed on the GOP ticket for the upcoming election, set his sights squarely on the Council in discussing this “contract fiasco,” as he called it.
Noting that the Council asked no questions of Gray after his September 22 announcement of the contract loss, Holden proceeded to ask several questions of his own.
Holden asserted that, while the City may offset the need to lay off ten officers through attrition, “we’ll still carry the pension liabilities of these extra officers but will no longer be receiving any outside contributions” from Lancaster Township. “How will this affect the city’s budget?,” Holden asked.
Holden suggested that price of the City’s offer to Lancaster Township—nearly 75% more expensive than Manheim Township’s proposal—revealed that “the management of the City’s expenses is out of control.” Holden further suggested that such high expenses could be indicative of a greater pattern: “Is this type of inefficiency occurring throughout the city?”
The candidate urged the sitting Council to set public safety as a top priority in their budget. “The city has put so much time and energy into putting in new sidewalks and crosswalks downtown. What good are they if no one feels safe enough to walk on them after 6 o’clock?” Holden recommended that the Council come up with a plan to retain those 10 police positions after the expiration of the Lancaster Township contract.
“We need more officers within the City limits to keep our communities safe,” Holden said.
Also at the Tuesday meeting it was reported that the City is currently considering a name change for North Broad Street, located at the far eastern edge of Lancaster City. The name for this street may be shifted to ‘Thaddeus Stevens Way.’ The change was initially proposed by officials from the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology as a prominent honor for their namesake and to assist drivers in locating the nearby institution.
Until the legal and infrastructure costs of this proposal are fully understood, and the opinion of Broad Street residents gauged, the Council will make no final decision regarding the proposal.
Also at the meeting, the Mayor announced that, through a cooperative purchasing agreement with the Pennsylvania League of Cities, the City of Lancaster would reduce its electricity rate by 14.8% next year. The figure is rather impressive, considering that next year marks the lifting of PP&L rate caps, which has meant a definite cost increase for most government entities. According to Gray, the City will spend 26% less than PP&L’s going rate for next year.
It was painfully obvious at the October 13, 2009 Lancaster City Council meeting that candidate Matt Holden simply does not understand how the City government’s finances work. Mr. Holden found it very easy to claim that the City’s expenses are out of control, but had he actually attended even a few Finance Committee meetings he would understand that the Gray administration – supported by City Council – has been doing everything humanly possible to reduce costs and improve operating efficiencies.
Matt Holden could not possibly have taken the time to examine Lancaster City’s proposal to Lancaster Township, which included the City’s costs for overhead and incidental expenses, and compare it to Manheim Township’s proposal, which charges incidental expenses and overtime separately, and does not charge Lancaster Township for all overhead costs.
Mr. Holden would have earned a lot more credibility had he gotten his facts straight, but just as important is that he offered no proposals, nor mentioned any alternatives. Lancaster City does not need City Council members who strongly criticize, yet provide no solutions; this kind of attitude can only lead to strife and division, and would make it much more difficult to get any work done.