Standing Up to Ellwood Electric, a Facebook page created in response to larger-than-average electric bills in the Ellwood City Borough for July’s billing cycle, has grown to nearly 1,200 members.
One of the group’s moderators, Dave Gulish, created a resource page available to anyone wishing to learn more about Ellwood’s Electric Department and borough government.
On July 20, Gulish filed a Right to Know request with the borough for information including wages, wage increases, overtime wages and general information on the electric department.
On July 27, Borough Manager Bob Villella responded with a letter to Gulish stating that the borough had fulfilled the request with 94 pages of information. All requests were met except for an “itemized account of all spending of transferred money from the Electric Fund to the General Fund,” because the “expenditures incurred by the Borough of Ellwood City are not segregated according to revenue streams from which they originate.”
The entire 94-page folder is available as a download on Gulish’s page.
On Aug. 1, Gullish filed another Right to Know Request for additional information regarding the borough’s expenditures and assets. Under state law, the borough has five business days to respond to the request, which would be tomorrow.
Information on Pennsylvania’s Right to Know can be found here.
This all seems simple: If we eliminate the electric department and raise taxes will the average electric bill be reduced more than the average tax bill will be raised? If the difference is not significant, then why all the fuss?
And, yes of course all spending should be reviewed.
we spend 40% on the police force while the fire depart is only 9%. Some officers are making over 100k! Maybe we need to knock that number down to 20-25%.