Petersburg’s borough assembly meets Tuesday, January 2, 2018. (Joe Viechnicki/KFSK)
The Petersburg borough is looking for ideas on how to cut the cost of local government or bring in more money for the municipality. A series of public open houses starts up this month.
Petersburg’s borough manager Steve Giesbrecht proposed the meetings to gather input on the borough budget. The borough assembly is not yet looking at an actual spending plan for the upcoming year but wants the public opinion for when it does. Giesbrecht told the assembly Tuesday about what he hoped for from the sessions.
“Basically we’ll be hosting a series of open houses to allow community members to identify areas where the borough could reduce expenses or increase revenues,” Giesbrecht said. “As we’ve seen state and federal resources decline, we understand the community will need time and have to kinda weigh in on how we’re gonna handle things in the borough ourselves.”
The sessions are on three different days and times to accommodate schedules. The first is Wednesday, January 3rd from noon-2 p.m. The second is Thursday, January 18th from 4-6 p.m. and the final one is Saturday January 27th from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. The open houses will be held in the borough assembly chambers and Giesbrecht said they will be informal.
“There’s not a planned presentation or anything like that,” the manager explained. “It’s really basically folks can come in, we’ll have, I’ll be here, maybe some of the other staff, but it’s really about folks come in if they have ideas and we’ll capture those ideas, get ‘em written down and then eventually all of those ideas will come back to the assembly to take a look at and discuss.”
Typically the assembly considers a borough budget in April, May or June. People who miss the open houses can email ideas to the borough. The address is petersburgplan@petersburgak.gov
