Jan 15, 2026 By Jon Andreassi 5 min read

South Strabane Township will hold workshop meetings for its newly reopened budget next week, but multiple residents already have voiced concerns about the direction the new board of supervisors may be taking.

At a special meeting Tuesday, supervisors set budget workshop meetings for 6:30 p.m. Jan. 19 and Jan. 22.

Township solicitor Dennis Makel told supervisors that since they have reopened the budget, they will need to approve a new spending plan by Feb. 15 under state law.

After next week’s workshop meetings, the new budget will be advertised and available for review at the municipal building prior to a final vote.

At Tuesday’s meeting, some residents had a copy of a potential budget obtained through right-to-know requests.

Jeff Bull, vice chair of the board of supervisors, cautioned that the proposal was not necessarily representative of what elected officials will vote on in the coming weeks.

“It was never meant to be put out to the public, because it’s still a work in progress. Period,” Bull said.

The draft budget does not call for raising taxes, nor did the budget that had already been approved.

This document suggests the township cut expenses by about $400,000 from the original $8,738,521 budget for 2026. Mark Murphy, who retired from the board of supervisors at the end of the year, questioned how these cuts would be possible.

“The full-time wages all went down. They’re union contracts. They’re negotiated that they go up 3, 4, 5% every year. I don’t know how you could decrease them, unless you’re going to lay people off. I don’t know if that’s your intention or not,” Murphy said.

Another sticking point for those who spoke at the meeting is that this proposed budget slashes the parks and recreation spending for programming from $10,000 to zero.

Michelle Wrubleski, chair of the township’s parks and recreation commission, argued that their events are a benefit to the community.

“Our parks and rec has brought meaningful and affordable and memorable experiences to residents. For example, children were about to learn about and see and even touch different species of animals, many for the first time in their lives,” Wrubleski said. “The breakfast with Santa had children cheering and chanting as Santa arrived. We purposely kept that event affordable so families with multiple children would be able to participate without a financial burden.”

She implored the supervisors to keep the programming budget intact when developing the new 2026 budget.

“We are all volunteers giving our time, energy, passion, because we care deeply about the community. We work hard to stay in the budget and are fiscally responsible,” Wrubleski said.

However, not everyone in the room Tuesday was against the efforts to reshape the township budget. Judi Panasik pointed to the victory for Zack Morgan in the 2025 election. Morgan won with nearly 66% of the vote over Robert Schuerle.

Panaski said Morgan, Bull and board Chair George Rowand were taking action they were elected to do.

“The last election that just happened was a 2 to 1. That hasn’t happened in over 20 years, if ever. It was the largest number of votes for a singular person, ever,” Panasik said. “You guys told the residents of this township what you wanted to do, you’re doing it, and this is what they wanted. There may be people in this room against it, but this is the minority. The majority elected you. They told you what they wanted by voting for you, and I hope you stick with that.”

Supervisor Bob Weber previously said he did not support reopening the budget, which passed 3-2 while he was chair of the board in December. Weber and Russ Grego voted against the reopening at the reorganization meeting earlier this month.

Toward the end of the special meeting, Bull criticized township spending and said previous boards had “failed to understand the concerns of a vast majority of our residents.”

Bull took aim at the decision to implement a 0.75 mill fire protection tax in 2022, which was done in part to help pay for a $1.3 million fire truck with a 107-foot ladder.

“The hard truth is the taxpayers will pay on it until 2034. They will have paid a half a million dollars in interest, and they will still owe almost $700,000 on it,” Bull said. “We are not ruling out placing it up for sale, but we are reaching out to local elected officials for grants, and plan to visit with the volunteer fire company, who owns the current aerial truck, to explore the sale of it, and place those funds on the new one. Simply put, we don’t need two, nor do we need to pay the insurance upkeep on two.”

Morgan attended the meeting via phone, and reiterated that the budget residents were referring to was a “rough draft,” but voiced support for spending cuts.

“I want a police department, not a half of a police department. I want a fire department, not half of a fire department, and I want a road department. So we have to get our house in order. We have to make the little cuts to the non-functioning government spending that we are doing. It is out there. I’ve seen it. We are going to cut these things that have nothing to do with the functioning of government,” Morgan said.