Evesham Township to look into possible tax impact of closing Evans School

Mayor Randy Brown will be having his professional team investigate the impact of tax appeals should Evans Elementary School close.

According to Township Manager Bill Cromie, Brown instructed Director of Finance Tom Shanahan to investigate how it will affect residents and the township.

“We’re trying to determine some specifics by working with the tax assessor and CFO to get some numbers together and possibly determine how much revenue we might lose if the school closes,” Cromie said.

According to Councilman Ken D’Andrea, the plan is to find what the mathematics are behind closing it.

“Is it a one-time revenue? What does it do to property value, is there a domino effect?” D’Andrea asked. “We don’t know the answer, but that is what the mayor would like to find out to see the impact on the entire township.”

In other news:

• The council is continuing discussion on the possibility of building a dog park in the township.

As of last week’s meeting, the council had Evesboro Downs as the location where the park would be built.
There is a need for a park in the township, D’Andrea said.

“When you look at the number of dogs that have been licensed over the last four years, there are almost 2,000 now in 2013,” D’Andrea said. “There has been a 25 percent increase in the last five years and it has increased each year.

“From there, you’re seeing a number of people ask: ‘why do the neighboring towns have one and not us?’”

Due to Evesboro Downs being a Green Acres location, a public hearing was required at the meeting.

Residents of The Vineyard attended the meeting to discuss the location of the park, D’Andrea said.

“They felt it was too close to their development. The Vineyards is a private development and the area is private,” Cromie said. “The residents felt one court is in too close proximity. Neighbors felt that people wanting to use the park would park in the development in those spots and walk through their development.”

Council agreed and will be searching for another location to host the park.

“There are a number of things we want to do in line with recreation and look at the whole gambit of what is recreation,” D’Andrea said. “One of those is a dog park, which is good and bad through assessing and researching dog parks throughout the counties. We want to know what is good and what is bad, what is the cost?” D’Andrea said.

Bottom line was, council is going to take a step back and take a look at other locations, D’Andrea said.

• The township’s website is in need of a facelift, D’Andrea said.

“Randy has a great vision and we want to be proactive,” D’Andrea said. “We want to tackle our website, looking at it from a social media perspective from a Facebook page, to Twitter and infusing it all together.”

Council will be taking a page out of the police department’s book, which updates the Facebook page and Twitter constantly to keep residents informed.

“They’ve done a good job of working it and it has gotten a lot of accolades,” D’Andrea said. “We want to take that and what they’ve learned and be one voice in the community to have the rest of the township.”

Currently, council members are developing requirements with certain department heads to price what a possible re-design would cost.

“At this point, the expertise does not lie within the township, but it’s not a done deal yet,” D’Andrea said.

D’Andrea is floating the idea of making the website intuitive, possibly developing an app for phone or tablet devices to assist in bringing the township “up to speed.”

“We want to be the premier portal or tool that other towns can look at and say, that’s a great thing we do,” D’Andrea said.
The township is also looking at other towns and seeing how websites are run.

Everything is preliminary and no decisions have been made yet, D’Andrea said.

• The next township council meeting is scheduled for Dec. 3 at 6:30 p.m.