Committee presses building-and-housing collection, corrects consultant coding for Yerkes

During public comment and committee discussion at the Jan. 8 West Chester Finance Committee meeting, resident Anne Carroll raised concerns about how consultant costs for Yerkes were coded and about unpaid rental-permit revenue. Carroll said she had reviewed staff responses and asked, "Is it did we really do that?" and called misclassification “unauthentic” if left uncorrected.

Barb, a borough staff member, told the committee she had created a journal entry that “is in mister Metric's review file.” Finance Director Sean Metric explained that building and housing had lacked a consultant line item when the Yerkes expense of roughly $20,000 occurred, so staff recorded it to Public Works to give visibility to consultant spending until a proper line item could be created and corrected in the 2025 records. Metric described the amount as “immaterial” to operations but acknowledged the committee's auditor concerns and said the coding would be corrected.

Committee members and residents also pressed staff on rental-permit collections. Committee member Bernie and resident Anne Carroll cited uncollected rental-permit amounts of about $30,000 from 2023 and $44,000 from 2024, which together approximate $74,000 to $76,000. Carroll said, “If we have 44,000 outstanding, there are a 1,000 properties that either changed from rentals or they're thumbing their noses at us because they know we're not doing our job.”

Metric and Barb described the collections process: the Housing Department sends bills, enters payments in the permitting system, runs reports for unpaid properties, sends second notices and, if needed, pursues citations. Metric said the borough will “go after it hard now and in the first 60 days of 2025 to get the cash into the borough's coffers,” and Barb offered to prepare a reconciliation for the committee by the next week.

The committee directed staff to reconcile and report back, and to move the $21,000 consultant charge back to Building and Housing via the journal entry under review. Members discussed possibly assigning temporary staffing or a focused effort to collect outstanding permits and emphasized enforcement powers in borough ordinance, noting penalty language that can remove the right to rent for noncompliance.

Ending: Staff will provide a reconciliation of past-due rental permits and the status of the Yerkes journal entry at the committee's next scheduled work session; the committee indicated it may refer broader enforcement and process issues to the Smart Growth Committee for follow-up.