JACKSON TWP — Disagreements over appropriations for the 2010 budget delayed the unveiling of the township's preliminary budget.

Township staff presented a potential preliminary budget to supervisors Thursday evening in anticipation the board would consider it for advertisement.

Municipalities have until Dec. 31 to pass a new operating budget and must put their preliminary budget on display for at least 20 days before taking a vote, according to state law.

However, Thursday evening all three supervisors had different issues with the way the budget was proposed and couldn't come to a consensus.

A budget session likely will be scheduled for later this month.

Township manager Rich Crown said the nearly $2 million 2010 budget he presented Thursday evening was a flat budget because of the current economic conditions.

The appropriations were similar to 2009 and included scheduled road improvement projects, no major capital equipment expenditures and no additional employee hirings.

The budget is down just slightly from the $2.3 million budget approved for this year.

The township's current tax rate is 7.875 mills.

A mill generates $1 in revenue for each $1,000 of a property's assessed value.

Supervisor Roy Huffman didn't agree with how the current millage rate was distributed.

In this year's budget, the township had taken 0.25 mill each from the 0.75 mill that previously had been dedicated to pay township debt and the 0.75 mill that was dedicated for capital equipment purchases to the general fund to make up for budget revenue shortfalls.

Huffman also wanted those funds to be restored and deeper cuts made to the budgets of the police and public works department and putting $95,000 in a budgetary reserve fund.

Although supervisors Gary Goehring and Tom West seemed to be in favor of restoring the millage allocations to their pre-2009 budget appropriations, Goehring said Huffman was looking to have employees laid off in both the public works and police departments with his proposed budget cuts.

West also disagreed with Huffman and said, in principle, he was against establishing the reserve fund proposed by Huffman.

"I don't believe taxpayers of today should be funding the taxpayers of tomorrow," said West, who added that if the township actually had $95,000 in additional revenues remaining, then it should be given back to residents in tax breaks.

Disagreements also arose over a request by the Zelienople Public Library to increase the township's annual contribution by $500 to $11,000 for 2010.

Huffman initially proposed to increase the contribution. However, Goehring said he believed a lot of residents used the Evans City Library and that additional funding wasn't warranted.

West made a motion to advertise the budget as presented with the additional library funding included, but that motion died on the table and no other budget motions were presented before the meeting was adjourned.