Short version: Collegeville (forever in financial trouble) needs a new source of revenue, a new ATM for their Council to tap. Trappe’s “Trusted Team” of Schuetz, Edwards, DiPrete and Stomel voted Tuesday to grant the surviving Authority power to give unsecured loans so that Collegeville can borrow at will from the Authority for the next 50 years. Need more money?? RAISE WATER RATES! Like printing money. Politicians can then point fingers at the Authority when people complain. “It's not we your elected officials raising your rates; it's the independent Authority who answers to no one not even to us.” Winner-winner chicken dinner! Unless you, like me, are a Trappe water and sewer ratepayer. We’ll have to foot the bill for this foolishness. We lose our voice entirely, and our money.
The Authority has already hired its own attorney; also working on this are Trappe’s and Collegeville's attorneys. That's three of the area's most experienced municipal law firms now burning all their brain cells trying to figure out how to find a loophole or somehow skirt around Pennsylvania Authorities Act requiring the two-thirds vote of each Council. Why? Because Trappe’s Trusted Team doesn't have the required 5 votes out of 7. They are down to 4 until January when they are down to only 3. The other three Council members, Scholl, Johnson and Liberi, recognize this move as both unjustified by those pushing for it and unfair to Trappe ratepayers, and have consistently voted against the move. If this move is not outright illegal, why is it taking three law firms to figure out a loophole and cover-up language to make it appear legal?
Schuetz, Edwards, DiPrete and Stomel are Trappe’s Trusted Team, trusted by voters to run it all, and are now after many years losing their majority in January. However, before turning over control to the new majority, the Team is bent on destroying Public Works which has provided us with clean drinking water and other services since 1935, in favor of the sewer Authority of which Schuetz and Edwards are already members. The Trusted Team’s final bold move, their boldest ever, is to screw over Trappe ratepayers to help out their buddies in Collegeville, removing water and sewer decisions from elected officials who face voters, and secure for themselves full and unchallenged control of our water and sewer. What a legacy.
