Bridgeville Borough last week unanimously approved a 2019 budget with no real estate tax increase.

Holding line on taxes is particularly notable considering the June flood that drained the borough government of nearly $400,000 in clean-up costs and other expenses.

Councilman Joe Verduci, who heads the finance committee, credited borough manager Lori Collins with keeping Bridgeville on-budget this year despite the flood-related expenses.

“As soon as the flood happened, Lori pretty much stopped writing checks,” he said, “and all of the different things that we had budgeted that weren’t necessary, we postponed.”

Although Bridgeville’s cash reserves are low, the municipality expects to end 2018 with a balanced budget and will move forward with some long-planned improvements in 2019 and 2020, including:

Flood mitigation projects
Adaptive traffic signals
Restroom upgrades at Chartiers and McLaughlin parks
Contributions toward the 2020 bridge replacement and street redesign at Washington Avenue and Chartiers Street.
Continued pavement maintenance on borough-owned street.
Expansion of the backflow preventer program to help residents living in flood-prone areas.

During last week’s meeting, Verduci’s PowerPoint presentation ran into some technical issues, but you can download the entire slide deck here.

If you want to dig deeper, the entire 2019 line-by-line budget is here.