Lansdale looks to clarify finances as budget season starts

Borough officials are looking to shed some light on the town’s financial picture, as recent campaign rhetoric has included allegations of mismanagement in the town’s administration.

“As far as the audits go, for 2023 we’ve submitted 119 documents. So far they’ve accepted 65, and found nothing outstanding,” said councilwoman Carrie Oglesby.

“We have a dashboard that we can view where we are in the process, so we’re hopeful we’ll be complete by mid-November, and then as soon as that’s done, we’re going to roll into 2024,” she said.

Each year the town typically starts budget talks in September and October, advertises a draft budget for public input and comments in November, then finalizes that budget and any accompanying tax or utility rate increases in December, before the completed year’s financial records are submitted to an outside auditor who vets the books, issues a report, and presents publicly at the start of the subsequent year.

While the budget votes have happened on time, that audit process has been delayed for the past two years, according to Oglesby, due in large part to the departure of the town’s then-finance director in March 2025 after less than a year on the job. Current finance director Christopher Shannon started in June and is the fifth person to hold that job since the start of 2021, amid high demand for experts in the field; similar finance posts have also changed hands in Upper Gwynedd and Montgomery Township in fall 2024, in Towamencin that August, and in the North Penn School District in spring 2025.

Online chatter

The town’s financial picture was the subject of an online spat in late August prompted by former Mayor Andy Szekely, now running for the same position, who told North Penn Now in August the finance director turnover “does not look good,” and said he had heard the town had not paid bills. Council members responded by sparring over other rhetoric and encouraging him and any other residents with finance questions to attend council and committee meetings to hear more in public, and question staff and council directly.      

During the administration and finance committee meeting on Sept. 3, staff gave an update on the still-outstanding 2023 and 2024 financial audits, and a timeline to submit final documents for outside review. So far for the 2024 audit, staff have submitted over 90 out of roughly 120 documents required by outside auditors, Oglesby said, and no wrongdoing or missing funds have been identified; once the 2023 audit is finalized and a year-end surplus or deficit is calculated, that info will be used to finalize the 2024 audit.

“We’re hoping we should have that one completed in mid-February, and from there we’ll roll into 2025 and we’ll be right back on track,” she said.

To the allegations about bills, Oglesby said, the town started this spring to implement a monthly check warrant listing bills approved at each council meeting, a move council President Mary Fuller said is meant to add more transparency for council and public.

“Maybe something fell through the cracks, or there was grant funding that was lax in coming to us, so a contractor didn’t get paid, I’m not sure. I’d be interested, and be happy to address specifics. With the new check warrant, we’re getting in even more deeply, to keep track even more closely, of all the bills, not just the ones over $1,000,” Fuller said.  

“Frankly, these are some of the lessons we’re learning. That’s the upside to changing finance directors: we’ve learned lessons, and know better what to look and ask for,” she said. “We have come leaps and bounds from where we were. There was a time when none of these numbers were available publicly.”

Did bond rating change?

During the committee meeting, residents asked if the borough currently has a bond rating, and if it has deceased or been downgraded in recent years. Shannon said the town’s most recent bond rating was AA- from bond borrowings secured in early 2020 when the town refinanced old debt at lower rates in the early days of the pandemic, and while talks on a bond were held earlier this year but stalled, that rating would be updated if and when council proceeds with a fresh bond.

“This is public debt. I spent a lot of years in the private sector, and did hundreds of millions of dollars in debt deals. A bond issuance is much more detailed, public debt has a lot more requirements, more regulations, around it,” he said.

So far in 2025, Oglesby told the committee, annual operational expenses are running roughly $1 million higher than at the same time last year, due to a combination of several factors: roughly $500,000 in staff salaries, largely police, that have increased from the prior year, an early allocation of roughly $130,000 of the town’s annual subsidy to the Lansdale Public Library, and roughly $250,000 in “consulting expenses for our financial issues.”

Sewer revenues are “a little bit off” due to a summer shutdown by Merck for utility line upgrades there, but sewer expenses also decreased with that reduced flow, and electric expenses did increase this summer due to hot weather and increased capacity and transmission charges anticipated when an electric rate hike was approved last fall.

Looking in the weeds

Mayor Garry Herbert asked for specifics on the police salary expense item, and Oglesby said that deficit was due largely to increases in longevity pay and to salary increases required in the town’s contract with the police department.

“That will be corrected for 2026 — it’s just another snag in a long and tedious budget process,” she said, and Herbert replied: “Those are contractual, so they existed, they just weren’t accounted for.”

Another resident asked how the new finance director plans to account for variances as the 2026 budget takes shape, and Shannon said he’s already eyeing rising electric and natural gas prices across the country to see how those utility costs factor into the town’s budget, and what specific numbers will be needed to account for the roughly $5 million transfer from electric department revenue the town makes each year to cover other operating costs.

“I don’t think residents understand, without the electric enterprise fund, what that would do to taxes,” Fuller said.

Those rising electric costs are why the town authorized an electric rate study in 2023 and approved a rate hike last year, Oglesby added, and could do so again as costs for the upcoming year come into focus.

“We’re probably going to end up having to keep raising electric rates, just to keep up with the times. But because we do own our electric company, we can withstand more: Perkasie just raised theirs 20 percent, and we kept our (increase) to five,” Oglesby said.

Moving ahead

As for the 2026 budget, Shannon has begun meeting with all of the town’s department heads to discuss their annual operational and long-term capital needs for the upcoming year, and that feedback will be used to develop a draft budget for talks starting in October.

“In the next few weeks, he’ll reach out to all of us to schedule our next round of budget meetings for council members,” she said.

And a onetime revenue item may appear on the books for the current year — a roughly $150,000 sale of stocks that was identified by staff last year as being held in a borough fund since the 1980s, will be liquidated soon.

“We’re hoping to have that all submitted in a few weeks,” she said.

Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 1 and the administration and finance committee next meets at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 1, all at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.

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