Adams Township supervisors at a special meeting Monday morning, Dec. 22, unanimously adopted the municipality’s 2026 budget, a plan that once again holds the line on local taxes.

The board kept the township’s real estate tax rate at 3.75 mills, which has gone unchanged since 1994. One mill equals $1 for every $1,000 of a property's assessed value.

Chairman Russell Ford said the decision followed months of detailed review and analysis.

“We go through a very, very large budget process,” Ford said. “We have over 360 line items that we analyze, and we start normally in October. It’s a very diligent process, and we felt we had no problem with revenues meeting expenses for 2026.”

The adopted budget projects $9,960,125 in revenue against $9,959,125 in expenses, resulting in a $1,000 surplus in the general fund. About $8.11 million of that revenue is expected to come from taxes.

Public safety continues to dominate township spending, accounting for about 39% of total expenses, according to Ford.

Next year’s budget allocates $3,933,137 to police, fire and emergency medical services, with an additional $2,266,386 for general government and $1,667,250 for public works.

“You can understand that we take our public safety very serious,” Ford said. “That’s a big number.”

Rather than adopting a dedicated emergency medical services tax, supervisors opted to increase the township’s annual contribution to Quality EMS from $125,000 to $150,000, which will come out of the general fund.

Ford said the township worked closely with EMS leadership to determine an increase that made sense.

“We spent time with their management team on what we could afford in the budget,” he said. “We didn’t feel we needed to put the tax in play, but we were able to find and come up with an increase for them.”

Ford added that the township plans to form an EMS funding committee in January 2026 to examine long-term funding options that go beyond budget season.

The budget also includes a few staffing changes, specifically the addition of three full-time public works employees who began earlier this month and are fully budgeted for 2026. Another code enforcement official was also added this year and will carry over into next year’s expenses.

“My job is to balance the budget,” Ford said. “We take a lot of pride in it. We take the process seriously, and we put a lot of time into it.”