Mayor Galati highlights grants, infrastructure upgrades and community initiatives in year-end remarks

Mayor Marie Galati delivered a year-end address at the borough’s reorganizational meeting in which she reviewed 2024 accomplishments and indicated priorities for 2025.

Why it matters: The mayor’s remarks outline the borough’s recent performance on finances, permitting, infrastructure and community programs and signal priorities and projects the administration will pursue in the coming year.

Highlights the mayor reported

- Grants and finances: The borough secured $329,236 in grants and had $2,632,007.02 in pending grant applications. The borough achieved a 97.9% tax collection rate and settled 109 tax appeals with 21 cases still pending at the state level.

- Infrastructure and public works: DPW reported installation of PFAS filtration units on the seven municipal wells serving more than 2,200 customers; the department installed 689.57 tons of hot patch, 266 tons of material (described as "cupid" in the transcript), repaired catch basins, installed drainage pipe, processed leaf collection and removed 376 Christmas trees curbside. The mayor also listed counts for water-main and service-line repairs completed in 2024.

- Businesses and housing: The mayor said the borough welcomed five new businesses (including two restaurants and an ice-cream shop identified in the transcript) and completed a Lakeside Living housing project that added units and renovations totaling 24 units.

- Permits and municipal services: The construction department issued 944 permits and logged hundreds of inspections across building, electrical and plumbing; the clerk’s office processed hundreds of OPRA requests (including two very large requests of ~2,109 and ~1,000 pages), issued liquor licenses and handled other licensing activity.

- Community engagement: The borough hosted the first annual large flag day parade with more than 750 marchers and noted collaboration with volunteer organizations, the ambulance squad and the fire department.

What the mayor did not specify

Many statistics were presented in summary form; the mayor did not provide supporting documents in the meeting transcript (grant award letters, detailed financial statements, permit logs or contracted vendor lists). Several figures (for example pending grant totals and the exact counts in some DPW metrics) were verbal and not shown as documentary evidence in the transcript.

Next steps

The mayor indicated the borough will seek new revenue sources beyond taxes and grants, continue communications with professionals and developers to speed project completion, and pursue utility expansions where feasible. Specific timelines, budgets or contract details were not provided in the remarks; the transcript shows the mayor inviting further engagement and collaboration in 2025.