CRANBERRY TWP — Cranberry supervisors on Thursday approved a budget for 2022 that features a small surplus and will not increase taxes.

The $22.2 million preliminary budget, which passed the township board of supervisors unanimously, includes a projected surplus of approximately $200,000 and keeps the total tax rate at 13.25 mills.

Township manager Dan Santoro said a large portion of the surplus comes as Cranberry calculates its tax collections will return to pre-pandemic levels. Act 511 taxes, which include local income tax, are expected to return to 2019 levels, he added. Additionally, the township will now collect roughly $200,000 from the Westinghouse Electric Co. properties as the 15-year property tax abatement will end at the end of 2021.

Santoro added the township is still conservatively budgeting certain line items — such as the $1 per week local services tax levied on employees and the 1 mill mercantile tax on business' gross receipts — due to the current low collection rate, but noted they will likely increase beyond budgeted levels.

The 2022 budget builds on the 2021 pandemic financial planning, for which the township projected a deficit, but ended up with a balanced budget.

“We were still being cautious but, candidly, we came through that because of the prudent financial decisions this board has made in the last 10 years,” Santoro told supervisors Thursday.

Among other items in the budget, Cranberry received $1.65 million from the federal government via the American Rescue Plan Act and has budgeted $1.3 million for improvements. The federal government's current guidance for allowable expenditures of that money includes several types of infrastructure projects as well as replacing revenue lost during the COVID-19 shutdowns and subsequent tax decreases, but the township has only specified it plans to use those funds on “sewer, water, storm water infrastructure projects.”