HARVEYS LAKE — With four borough council seats needing to be filled, Harveys Lake residents will choose between first-time candidates and public office veterans on Nov. 3.
Harveys Lake Borough’s ballot consists of Democratic incumbents Michell’e Boice, Thomas Kehler and Ed Kelly and Republican challengers Jennifer Johnson, Wayde Post, Rick Svec and Bernie Ozovek.
Council seats are for a four-year term.
Amy Williams, who occupied the fourth council seat, is not on the Nov. 3 ballot.
If elected, Johnson, a stay-at-home-mom and active volunteer at the Dallas Baptist Church, would continue investing in the borough’s infrastructure. Johnson and Svec, want to increase the council’s fiscal responsibility and transparency.
“Harveys Lake has a diverse 1-percent population and then there is everybody else,” Johnson said. “We have to keep everyone in mind when governing.”
Johnson and Svec, a borough resident since 2008 and sales representative at Merritt Veterinary Supplies Inc., question the council’s October decision to eliminate the $5 per capita tax in 2016.
The per capita tax is applied to every resident 18 years old and older, except those in college.
“The council decided to stop collecting the per capita tax without raising the mill rate to compensate,” Johnson said.
Harveys Lake Borough mill rate for 2015 is set at .804. A mill is a $1 tax on every $1,000 of assessed property value.
Boice said the nuisance tax provided less than $5,000 in income for the borough. “It would have cost (the borough) more to collect it,” she said.
Ozovek, a 22-year Harveys Lake resident and executive chef and purchasing agent for the Shadowbrook Inn & Resort in Tunkhannock, believes the borough’s hot topic is the new police station and potential cost to residents.
The current police station has many structural and air quality issues.
In 2012, it was proposed to relocate the police station to an unused borough-owned building at 22 Little League Road. A grant for $78,220 from gaming funds was acquired to pay for the building’s renovation.
Residents wanted to keep the police station at the main entrance of the lake.
Council considered purchasing the former Villa Roma building for $380,000, pending building inspection approval, Ozovek said.
“Now they (council) are putting up a pre-fab building at an expense of over $230,000,” Ozovek said. “The expense, if passed, onto the taxpayers would be over $150,000.”
The grant would defray the costs of the prefabricated building.
Boice and Kelly said the new police station would not require any tax increase.
“The borough is in very good financial shape,” Boice said.
When Boice was elected to council in 2011, there was a deficit of nearly $50,000. That year, council members suspended their monthly stipend, froze wages and cut all unnecessary spending, she said.
“We turned it around in a year,” Boice said.
Transparency of the borough’s finances are available through the detailed monthly budget reports that are available at the council meetings, Boice added. “Meeting minutes are available online.”
Increasing pedestrian and cyclist safety along Lakeside Road is a campaign strategy for Post, a 20-year borough resident and chef at Dugan’s Pub in Luzerne.
This summer, Paula Jones, 31, of Factoryville, was killed by a vehicle allegedly driven by Michael Scavone, 50, on Lakeside Road.
Borough police use electronic digital speed limit signs to raise motorists awareness to their speed on the state-owned road.
Kelly, a seven-term council member who has spent 31 years with the borough’s fire department, said the lake community has many seasonal residents during the summer months and maintaining residents’ safety on and off the water has always been an important factor.
Boice, a two-term council member and insurance and real estate agent, said a safety committee has been established to raise awareness of year-round and seasonal residents to slow people down.
